Alberta family dealing with rare disease while still reeling from murder

Nearly four years after their father and uncle were killed in shooting, an Alberta family is now struggling with a rare disease diagnosis.

Nearly four years after their father and uncle were killed in shooting, an Alberta family is now struggling with a rare disease diagnosis.

Sarah Sansom says she started noticing her daughter, Cierra, was clumsy when the girl was about three or four years old.

The Nobleford, Alta., woman says she didn’t think too much of it until her daughter started falling down as she got older. Her balance progressively got worse.

Sansom’s husband, Jacob, was killed on a rural road north of Edmonton in March 2020 while out hunting with his uncle Maurice Cardinal.

The pair was chased and gunned down by a father and son who had claimed they thought the men were going to rob them.

After that, Sansom says Cierra’s condition deteriorated quickly but that doctors blamed the symptoms on trauma.

“We had another neurologist who brushed off, kinda told her she was faking it,” Sansom told Global News.

In November, they met with a pediatrician in Lethbridge who sent Cierra for a spinal MRI.