HUNG UP ON DAD
Tot’s doc pa: Sitter cursed when I tried to help
The nanny accused of trying to snuff the life out of an infant she cared for in 2017 cursed at the tot's doctor dad and hung up the phone as he tried to coach her on life-saving techniques, the father told jurors Thursday.
Salomon Blutreich, 37, a radiologist, jumped on his bike at the downtown Brooklyn hospital where he worked and frantically cycled into Manhattan when he got a call from a family friend that something was wrong at his Waterside Plaza home on May 18, 2017.
He also repeatedly called Marianne Benjamin-Williams, 46, his children's nanny, who was not answering at first.
“I called back and I got through to her and I said, ‘What's going on?' ” he said on the witness stand at Benjamin-Williams' attempted murder trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Benjamin-Williams told him “she saw something white in (baby Maxwell's) throat — that's all she knows.”
Knowing “he could either be dead or brain-dead “by the time an ambulance arrived, he desperately tried to get his sitter to apply emergency intervention procedures on the 2-monthold.
“Turn him over on his belly — turn him upside down and slap his back,” the frantic father said.
“I know what the f--k I'm doing!” Benjamin-Williams fired back, according to his account. “And (she) hung up on me.”
The suspect's bizarre behavior continued at Bellevue Hospital where Benjamin-Williams — waiting for news alongside the terrified parents — was uncooperative with doctors seeking details on what happened, including Blutreich.
Blutreich described the dramatic scene and the intense efforts underway to save Maxwell's life in the pediatric emergency room.
“He looked terrible. There was blood coming out of his mouth…He was a tiny little baby and he was completely listless and he looked like he was already dead,” the distressed dad recalled.
“Everyone was running around but I don't know if anyone had any idea what to do,” he added.
Meanwhile, as doctors still unable to see the wipe tried to investigate, Benjamin-Williams “clammed up and wouldn't say a word to me” when Blutreich pushed for information.
“I felt that anger … I heard on the phone. It was scary and I didn't want to get between her and the physicians to figure out what the heck was going on with him,” he said.
She also complained in front of the terrified parents that she could go to jail if the baby died on “her watch,” Blutreich said.
Benjamin-Williams left the hospital before finding out what Maxwell's condition was and after complaining that she would not come back to work the next week without a full complement of cameras in the apartment to “protect herself.”
“Monday's not going to be a normal day because Max was going to be dead or brain-dead, so why are we even having this conversation?” Blutreich thought.
Blutreich's testimony is expected to continue Friday.
Benjamin-Williams' attorney Raymond Loving has argued that the wipe was caught in his throat by accident or that his 14month-old sister Ariella put it there. Prosecutors say it would have been impossible for the toddler to accomplish that.