The death of a Georgia couple's baby who suffered a broken neck during childbirth has been classified as a homicide by a medical examiner, the family's attorneys announced Wednesday.
Treveon Taylor Jr.'s parents sued the hospital and the doctor who delivered him last July. For their part, both the center and the specialist denied any wrongdoing. The Clayton County Medical Examiner's Office said the cause of the baby's death was a broken neck and said human action was to blame, according to a statement from the office distributed by attorneys during a news conference.
The deceased baby's parents, Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr., say Dr. Tracey St. Julian delayed a surgical procedure and didn't quickly seek help when the baby became stuck during delivery. Instead, they say she applied excessive force to the baby's head and neck. "This is something that is clearly contraindicated," attorney Roderick Edmond, who is also a doctor, said Wednesday. "No credible or reasonably competent obstetrician should do this."
St. Julian's attorneys said they reject the conclusion that the baby's injury occurred before death. "Although tragic, such a rare outcome has been reported in the medical literature and can occur without physician wrongdoing, as is the case here," they said. One of his attorneys, Scott Bailey, said in a court filing in September that the doctor used “every maneuver that a reasonable obstetrician would have used” to deliver the baby when his shoulder became trapped.
Bailey also claimed that the trauma to the baby's head and neck occurred after the death, in the process of trying to deliver the child by cesarean section and save the mother's life. She accused attorneys for Ross and Taylor Sr. of making “lewdly false public statements.”
The hospital where the baby was born, Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale, Georgia, also said the baby died in utero. The hospital denied any negligence in a court filing in November, and spokeswoman Melinda Fulks said she could not comment Wednesday because of the lawsuit.
Clayton Police Chief Frank Thomas said in an email Wednesday that the case was still under investigation. The department will not comment on the details of the active cases, he said.
