Baby’s decapitation at birth was murder, say US medical officials
THE death of a baby in the US who was decapitated during delivery last July has been ruled to be a murder.
The state of Georgia’s medical examiner’s office said that the death of the baby boy, Treveon Taylor Jr, was a direct result of human action.
The Clayton County Medical Examiner’s Office found that the immediate cause of the boy’s death was a fracture of cervical vertebrae in the spine, more commonly known as a broken neck.
The parents, Jessica Ross and Trevon
Isaiah Taylor Sr, sued the hospital and the doctor who delivered the baby last year.
They also accused staff of propping the baby’s head back on the body wrapped in a blanket to cover up the decapitation.
The hospital has denied any wrongdoing.
Allegations made by the boy’s parents in a lawsuit filed last August against the hospital in Riverdale, Georgia, appear to be confirmed by the findings of the medical examiner’s office.
The parents claimed that the doctor who delivered the baby, Dr Tracey St Julian, who was a member of a private practice and not employed by the hospital, applied excessive force to the baby while trying to pull him out of the birth canal.
The family has accused the hospital of lying to them. They say that they were not informed that their son was decapitated during the birth and were not allowed to touch him after the delivery.
“We just want justice for our son,” Mr Taylor said at a press conference on Wednesday in Atlanta. “They lied to us, they ain’t let us touch him, we didn’t like it.”
Ms Ross underwent a caesarean section to deliver the baby’s legs and body, but the head was delivered vaginally, according to Dr Roderick Edmond, the parents’ lawyer.
She and Mr Taylor said they were only informed of the condition of death by the funeral home and not by the hospital.
Staff at the hospital reportedly encouraged the couple to have the baby cremated without performing a post mortem, Dr Edmond said, alleging an attempted cover-up. “They wrapped the baby tightly in a blanket, propped the baby’s head up on a blanket,” Dr Edmond said at a news conference last year
He added that they were “basically making it look like there was no decapitation”.
Only once the medical examiner took custody of the baby boy’s body was an post mortem performed.
The medical examiner’s office has referred the incident to the police and they are currently investigating the case.