Police in Northern California have confirmed the weekend death of a 2-year-old girl as the child’s family and church community continue praying for her resurrection.
“We responded originally to a medical call on Saturday morning around 6 a.m.,” Sgt. Brian Torum of the Redding Police Department said in a phone interview with McClatchy News on Thursday. “It resulted in a death.”
The girl, Olive Heiligenthal, stopped breathing at her family’s Redding home and could not be revived that morning, her family said in posts on social media. But since then, parents Andrew and Kalley Heiligenthal have been praying for Olive to come back to life, along with fellow congregants at Bethel Church in the Northern California town and other followers of the Redding-based megachurch around the world.
The Shasta County Coroner’s Office did not respond to a request for confirmation of the child’s death on Wednesday, but Torum said the child’s body was taken to the coroner, explaining that bodies are sent to there “in all cases of death where an autopsy will be performed.”
Torum said police are looking into the child’s death.
“If it’s unexpected, we’ll open up a case to figure out how the death occurred,” Torum said. “It’s by no means at this point a suspicious death — but we still have to investigate to see what happened.”
It could take months for the official cause of death to be released, Torum said.
“The autopsy has been done. There’s no official result,” Torum said. “It’s still pretty early. We’re still talking to witnesses and going through information. It takes time.”
The girl’s mother, Kalley — a singer and songwriter at Bethel Music, which is affiliated with the church — wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday that “Day 5 is a really good day for resurrection.”
“I’ve never been more grateful for Jesus,” she wrote. “He is endlessly worthy of our love, trust, faith and risk.”
Pastor Bill Johnson of Bethel Church shared a video about Olive with the church Facebook page’s half-million followers on Wednesday.
“Mom and dad, Andrew and Kalley, have been praying for the miracle of resurrection. We’ve joined with them,” Johnson said. “We have a biblical precedent: Jesus raised the dead. Jesus raised the dead — not only that, he introduced himself as the resurrection and the life. In fact, in John 11:40, he says: ‘If you believe, you will see the glory of God.’”
The video has been viewed more than 200,000 times in less than a day.
Johnson told followers “the child has been in the morgue ever since the child died. She’s not here, we don’t surround the baby and perform some ritual — we’re just together, honestly, to worship Jesus. He’s the grace giver, we’re not.”
He also addressed questions some skeptics might have.
“Some would ask: How long do you pray, and when do you quit praying? And I don’t have a good answer,” Johnson said. “We’re kind of in the middle of that journey right now.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 2:27 PM.
