Kathleen Edward Huntington Dies After Cyber Bullying, of Disease

By Brittney R. Villalva, Christian Post Reporter Friday, January 13, 2012

Nine-year-old Kathleen Edward passed Wednesday, after struggling with Juvenile Huntington's disease. The young girl made headline in 2010, after becoming the victim to cyber bullying on the social media site, Facebook.

In 2010, a former neighbor posted pictures on Facebook that pictured the then 7-year-old Edward above a set of crossbones, and one with the little girl's mother, Laura Edward, who died of Huntington's disease in 2009, in the arms of the grim reaper.

The pictures were posted by 33-year-old Jennifer Petkov. The neighbor gave an unsettling reason for her motive. "Personal satisfaction. Because it rubs their a-s raw,” she told WJBK.

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Later, other neighbors told the local news station that Petkov and her husband had decorated their pickup to look like a hearse, strapped a homemade coffin on top, and drove it back and forth in front of the home Kathleen shares with her father and step mother. Petkov citied the incident as a Halloween prank.

Huntington’s Disease causes nerve cells in the brain to waste away. Edward was known to be in the final of stages of the disease, which also took the lives of her mother and grandfather.

Robert Edward, the girl’s father, wanted to leave a happier memory of his daughter. “The world remembers her smile and will never forget it," the father told Detroit News on Thursday. "She would do anything for anybody. She never complained - never."