A tear rolls down Jessica Ross' cheek during a press conference about her baby, which was decapitated during delivery. Photo / AP
A tear rolls down Jessica Ross' cheek during a press conference about her baby, which was decapitated during delivery. Photo / AP
WARNING: This story discusses graphic content and may be distressing.
The death of a Georgia couple’s baby decapitated during delivery has been classified by a medical examiner as a homicide, their attorneys announced on Wednesday.
Treveon Taylor Jr.’s parents have sued the hospital and the doctor who delivered the baby in July. Both have denied wrongdoing.
The Clayton County Medical Examiner’s Office found the immediate cause of the baby’s death was a broken neck and said human action was to blame, according to an office statement distributed by attorneys at a news conference on Wednesday.
A tear rolls down Jessica Ross' cheek during a press conference about her baby, who was decapitated during delivery. Photo / AP
The boy’s parents, Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr., say Dr. Tracey St. Julian delayed a surgical procedure and failed to seek help quickly when the baby got stuck during delivery. Instead, they say she applied excessive force to the baby’s head and neck.
“This is something that is clearly contraindicated,” their attorney Roderick Edmond, who is also a physician, said on Wednesday. “No credible, no reasonably competent obstetrician should ever do this.”
Taylor Sr. said the couple wants justice for their son.
Attorneys for St. Julian said they reject the finding that the baby’s injury happened before death.
“The separation of the head from the fetal body occurred post-mortem and any assertion to the contrary is false,” they said in a statement. “Although tragic, that rare outcome has been reported in the medical literature and can happen in the absence of any wrongdoing by the physician, which is the case here.”
Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr., parents of a baby who was decapitated during delivery, react during a press conference at their lawyers office. Photo / AP
One of the attorneys, Scott Bailey, said in a court filing in September that the doctor used “every manoeuvre a reasonable obstetrician would have employed” to deliver the baby when its shoulder got trapped.
“Dr. St. Julian is an experienced, well-trained, extremely competent physician who acted decisively and reasonably under these circumstances,” he wrote.
Bailey’s filing also asserted that the trauma to the baby’s head and neck occurred after death, in the process of attempting to deliver the fetus via a cesarean section and save Ross’s life. It accused attorneys for Ross and Taylor Sr. of making “salaciously false public statements” to the contrary.
The hospital where the baby was delivered, Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale, Georgia, has also said the baby died in utero, prior to the delivery and decapitation.
The hospital denied any negligence in a court filing in November, and spokesperson Melinda Fulks said she couldn’t comment on Wednesday because of the pending lawsuit.
Clayton County police were investigating, with the possibility of referring the case to prosecutors, the medical examiner’s office said in its January 6 news release.
Police Major Frank Thomas said in an email on Wednesday the case was still under investigation. The department will not comment on details of active cases, he said.
