US girl made to ‘run to death’ over candy bar

The grandmother and stepmother of a nine-year-old US girl who died after allegedly being forced to run around her family house for hours as punishment for lying about taking a candy bar have been charged with murder, police said.

“Joyce Hardin Garrard, 46, and Jessica Mae Hardin, 27, were both arrested and charged with murder in connection to the death of Savannah Hardin,” the CNN quoted Capt. Jeremy Walker saying in a release issued by the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office.

The girl died Monday.

At about 6.45 p.m., the stepmother called emergency no. 911 and said that the little girl, who had run for about three hours, had suffered a seizure and was unresponsive.

She died at a Children’s Hospital in Birmingham. A pathologist in Huntsville ruled her death a homicide.