SEVEN-MONTH-OLD BABY DIED AFTER DAD FOUND HIM NOT BREATHING ON A BEANBAG

A BABY boy died after being found unresponsive by his father.

Hunter Fitch-smith had been asleep on a beanbag at his Congleton home when dad Sam Smith found him not breathing.

Mr Smith carried out CPR until ambulance crews arrived, and the tot was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

An inquest into seven-month-old Hunter’s death heard his mum, Katelyn Fitch, and dad had no concerns about his health prior to the incident. The hearing was told Hunter was found unresponsive at around 5am on August 30, 2020.

In a statement read out by assistant coroner Heath Westerman, Mr Smith said Hunter had fallen asleep shortly after 9.30pm.

Ms Fitch had gone up to bed with a migraine, while Mr Smith stayed up late on the sofa, within arm’s reach of Hunter.

Mr Smith said: “I fell asleep not long after. The next morning I had woken up and gone to the toilet. The light was off and I could not see Hunter properly. As he was quiet, I assumed he was still asleep.

“When I came back from the toilet, I turned the light on and noticed that Hunter was white and not breathing. He was laid on his back still with one arm up above his head, leaning on the beanbag, and the red blanket was over Hunter’s eyes and head.

“I immediately took Hunter off the beanbag and put him on the floor, shouted Katelyn, and called the ambulance on my phone.

“The call-taker advised me how to give CPR, which Katelyn had done initially, so I took over and gave him two separate breaths with compressions before paramedics arrived and took over before taking Hunter away in the ambulance.”

Mr Smith added in his statement: “The day before, Hunter had been fine. He was a happy baby, who only really cried when he was hungry.”

Detective Inspector Stuart York, lead officer for child deaths in the Cheshire Constabulary area, said there were no suspicious circumstances or concerns following police inquiries.

Dr Rajeeev Shuklar, of Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, carried out the post-mortem, and multiple tests could not determine a cause of death, which was recorded as unascertained.

He did mention that baby’s sleeping on a bean bag is ‘considered unsafe’ but there was no evidence to suggest this had contributed to Hunter’s death.

Mr Westerman said: “It’s obviously an unsafe thing, in hindsight, to place any baby to sleep on, but there is no one single factor in Hunter’s death.

It is probably a mixture of existing conditions and external conditions.”

He recorded the medical cause of death as 1A unascertained, and the inquest conclusion as natural causes.