Video footage shot by a family shows their baby girl being dropped on her head by hospital staff in Arizona.
Monique Rodgers said that the video, shot by her husband, Derrick Rodgers, in February, shows three hospital workers cleaning the girl after she was born. As one worker held her in the air so another could clean below her, she slips out of the worker's hands and lands on her head.
Now her daughter has a grade 1 hemorrhage on the left side of her brain, possibly because she was dropped by the staffer.
"It's just traumatic," said Rodgers.
"You go through this for nine months, and for them to just drop your baby. You don't know if there's going to be long-term damage, because nobody has talked to you. Nobody has brought it to your attention."
In a statement to the local broadcaster, the hospital, Dignity Health Chandler Regional Medical Center, said it couldn't comment specifically on the case but that it was conducting "a comprehensive review" of what happened.
Mother Charged With Murder
Charges have been upgraded against a South Carolina woman accused of leaving her newborn daughter to die in a cardboard box in an empty field.The Greenville News reported that Brook Graham’s original charge of homicide by child abuse was upgraded to murder last week.
A man was picking flowers in the vacant field to prepare for Valentine’s Day in 1990 when he found the baby now known as Julie Valentine.
Julie was born alive outside of a hospital. She was found dead, wrapped in newspaper and bedding with her umbilical cord and placenta still attached. It’s unclear why she was abandoned.
Authorities said DNA submitted to genealogy sites revealed a likely match to the baby’s father, who then pointed police to Graham. She was arrested this month.
There were solid leads—the vacuum cleaner box where the girl was found was traced back to a couple living nearby—but never enough to definitively identify the parents or charge anyone, Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller said.
In November, DNA submitted to genealogy sites found a likely match to the baby’s father. Greenville detectives questioned him and he pointed them to his girlfriend at the time, Miller said.
The box matched the model of vacuum cleaner Graham and the probable father had bought before the baby was abandoned, according to the arrest warrant.
“There’s a field. It’s undeveloped. There is a pile of debris. It doesn’t stand out,” said Miller, who thinks the baby died shortly after she was abandoned. The girl wasn’t found for three days.
The cold case is the latest suddenly revived by DNA submitted by people hoping to find long lost relatives or clues to where their ancestors came from. Private genetic testing labs are taking police evidence, testing it and matching the results to the genealogy sites that make the results of their customers’ tests public.