Couple sue doctor after newborn baby ‘decapitated’ during delivery

The death of a baby who was decapitated during delivery was ruled a homicide by a Georgiamedical examiner’s office.

The baby died last July after a physician allegedly applied so much force attempting to free the child from a woman’s birth canal that the child’s spine was completely severed. The finding by the authorities appears to confirm allegations made by the family’s attorneys in a lawsuit filed last Augustagainst the hospital.

“We just want justice for our son,” the baby’s father, Treveon Taylor Sr, said at a press conference on Wednesday in Atlanta. The baby was named Treveon Taylor Jr after his father. “They lied to us, they ain’t let us touch him, we didn’t like it. We just want justice for our son.”


It was the first time the baby’s father has spoken publicly. The baby’s mother, Jessica Ross, was too distraught to speak at the press conference.

“Tragically, during her delivery, the baby was decapitated,” said Dr Roderick Edmond, an attorney on the family’s legal team.

Ross went to the hospital, Southern Regional medical center, about 13 miles south of downtown Atlanta in July 2023, “with the full expectation of having a healthy baby”, said Edmond.

Instead, Ross suffered early rupture of her membranes, and later her baby was trapped in the birth canal because of a shoulder dystocia, a condition where the baby’s shoulder becomes lodged behind the pubic bone.

“The baby was decapitated, for sure, as a result of a complication of the shoulder dystocia, but the standards of care are very, very simple,” for how to treat shoulder dystocia, Edmond said, involving mechanism maneuvers and, if needed, a cesarean section. Shoulder dystocia affects up to 2% of deliveries.

After the complications became apparent, the mother and child were taken into surgery for a cesarean section. Edmond said it is unclear whether the baby was already deceased when Ross was taken to the operating room.………

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ivery-homicide-georgia?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other