News & Photos: 13 year old Jahi McMath becomes brain dead after tonsil surgery, on life support

Nailah Winkfield, the mother of a California girl who was declared brain-dead, claims the hospital is starving her daughter while the family fights to keep her on life support. 13-year-old Jahi McMath went into cardiac arrest on Dec. 9 at Children's Hospital in Oakland following tonsil surgery to treat sleep apnea. Children’s Hospital doctors declared her brain-dead three days later, but the girl’s family insists she is still alive. The family has received support from a New York-based neurological foundation that was sending doctors to California to examine the girl. Winkfield claims her daughter moves at the sound of her parents’ voices and she says the hospital has been insensitive.

Children’s Hospital was set to unhook Jahi’s ventilator on Monday, but a court order in the final hours extended the deadline to Jan. 7. The family has been desperately searching for another facility to take Jahi before time runs out. Winkfield’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said the New Beginnings Community Center in Medford, N.Y., is a possibility, but Children’s Hospital is making it difficult by denying their attempts to bring in doctors to insert breathing and feeding tubes.
A hospital spokesman said the family hasn’t produced any doctors willing to perform the surgeries.

"I hate it that they refer to her as 'the body' or the deceased because that’s my child," Winkfield said Tuesday. "They don’t even use her hame. Her name is Jahi Mcmath and they don’t refer to her by name and I feel like that’s so disrespectful. "
"To watch my daughter just sit there and not have food ... I'm just so happy that she is kind of a thick girl so she still looks good," Nailah Winkfield told ABC’s "Good Morning America." "I tell her every day, 'Jahi, you losin' weight girl, but you still look good.' I just think it's inhumane to not feed my child, to not refer to her by her name, and stop us in our tracks."

13-year-old Jahi McMath

Children's Hospital

Nailah Winkfield, mother of 13-year-old Jahi McMath