Death/Loss

A baby in Houston, Texas that was dumped in a hospital garbage can by his mother earlier this month has died. The prosecutor is not going to charge the mother with murder, as he says there was no evident “intent to kill”.

The boy, known as “David” or “Baby Granados” by hospital staff, has been brain dead from the time he was found and revived at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital on Feb. 9.

The child had been on life support since a custodian discovered him that Saturday night at Southwest Memorial Hermann Hospital. The child had no pulse.

The child’s 29-year-old mother, Genny Granados, told authorities she went to the hospital’s emergency room for a stomach ache. While she was waiting to be seen, she went into a nearby restroom and delivered the baby and said it was not breathing and she thought it was dead, police said. She left it in a trash can and returned to the emergency room waiting area.

With echoes of Dennis Quaid’s high-profile hospital case last year, it appears another hospital pharmacy made an error, this time resulting in the death of a premature infant:

[Kathleen] Shinn says she could tell [her daughter] Alyssa was on the brink of death.

“I just knew,” she said. “And I just started to cry hysterically, knowing that my daughter Alyssa was going to die.”

After confirming that no one else was going to visit Alyssa, physicians turned off the ventilator and the Shinns held their lifeless child for the first time. “We were able to put her in a little dress,” said Shinn. “And I got to hold her for the first time.”

The Shinns were told that, during the night, Alyssa had received a fatal overdose of zinc from her intravenous nutrition bag, a mistake made in the hospital pharmacy. Pam Goff, the lead pharmacist on duty, was summoned to see her supervisor.

“I just broke down into tears and I started to shake,” Goff said. “And I just sobbed uncontrollably. I went back to my desk and started to vomit and cry and shake.”

The New York Times today profiles Kerron Rhaday, 16, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer and is now living with her older sister, Sharon Rhaday, 37, who is her legal guardian. The piece details how Rhaday has been helped by the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, which is supported by the New York Neediest Cases Fund), highlighting the importance of such charity to provide counseling, school tuition and more to ensure these kids don’t fall through the cracks after a devastating loss.

In July, Kerron started seeing Emma Dorfman, a social worker at the agency, weekly. “The counseling really helps,” Kerron said. “Emma, she helps you down the right path.”

The right path was hard to find after her mother’s death.

“When you have a mom,” Kerron said, “and see her every day like that, for me it was hard to concentrate a lot in school, because most times I would cry and stuff.”

Kerron, who had been a 10th grader at Sheepshead Bay High School, in Brooklyn, missed class to care for her mother.

She did not return to school after her mother died. “It’s stupid decisions, but at the time that’s what was best for me, I felt,” Kerron said.

In the fall, she started attending classes at an alternative high school program at the Jewish Board center, where she sees Ms. Dorfman. The one-year program helps students get back on track before returning to a mainstream high school, Ms. Dorfman said.