Pediatricians should guide parents through the process of their children’s healthy growth because they are trained to diagnose and treat a wide range of childhood diseases, whereas parents should not even consider giving medicine to their children without first consulting their children’s doctors.
In 2019, a newborn baby girl died after her father administered an anesthetic to her without consulting a pediatrician, and the father is now charged with murder in connection with the incident.
D. McCraw, 40, was charged with second-degree murder two years after administering a strong sedative to his daughter. Because his newborn couldn’t stop crying, the father allegedly gave her a strong sedative.
According to charging documents, police officers were called to a Seattle apartment building after an adult man called 911 to report being attacked. When officers arrived, the victim told them he had been attacked in front of his building by his neighbor, who was holding his crying baby at the time.
When officers arrived, the attacker was not at the scene, so they went to look for him in his condo, but he did not open the door. Meanwhile, responding officers called his wife, who was at work at the time, and told her about the incident. Soon after, the woman returned home and opened the condo door for the officers.
When police arrived at the condo, they found the 2-month-old baby face down on a bed, not breathing. Officers quickly moved her outside to be treated by medics, and she was taken to a hospital where she died later that night.
The newborn baby died from acute ketamine intoxication, according to an autopsy, but because the source of the drug was unknown at the time, her manner of death was ruled undetermined.
In some cases, medical personnel uses ketamine to relieve severe pain in patients.
After an investigation into the baby’s death revealed that no medical personnel administered ketamine to the victim, the medical examiner changed the manner of death to homicide.
According to officials, McCraw had “exclusive control of the child” on the night of the baby’s death while her mother was at work, and “the child was given ketamine during this time period,” the Seattle Times reported.
McCraw was arrested earlier this month and held on a $1 million bond. He is being held on second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter charges.
