Child's organs allegedly harvested without family's permission

LUBBOCK, Texas — For a woman in Texas, losing her 10-year-old granddaughter was hard enough. But now, she's dealing with unimaginable questions about what might have happened to the little girl's body during the autopsy. Documents indicate that doctors may have harvested her organs without permission.

"We did not sign up for this. I knew she had to have an autopsy but this is remove her, remove her, remove this. She was 10 years old," Rebecca Villarreall told KLBK. "Preserve each lung, what?"

Villarreall has questions about what happened to her adopted granddaughter after she died.

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Four days after Elaina Castilleja died, a memo was sent to the doctor who would perform her autopsy, giving instructions to harvest Elaina's organs. "Who are these monsters? These are monsters. Who are these people? I didn't sign no papers. I didn't sign for them to disassemble," said Villarreall.

In the letter signed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Sam Andrews, it instructs the doctor to preserve the brain, remove the cervical spine, eyes, and lungs among other things. "Who is this? Because this is not all of my baby, because what I'm reading here. This is all my child right here. Remove flesh and preserve the heart. I don't even have her heart?" said Villarreall.

Elaina suffered most of her life from the effects of shaken baby syndrome. Villarreall adopted Elaina when she was one year old. "She was a fighter, she grandma's baby, she got that from grandma," said Villarreall.

Villarreall said she was told because of the shaken baby syndrome, an autopsy needed to be done, but she never agreed to organs being harvested. "They literally disassembled my child. She wasn't a manufactured home. She wasn't a toy. She wasn't a doll. She was a person," said Villarreall.

It's unknown why Dr. Andrews and the pathology labs requested the organs to be taken out and it is unknown if the doctor followed through on the instructions to harvest the organs.

Experts say the law in a situation like this is complicated and usually comes down to a question of ethics.

CNN/KLBK