Infant’s parents plead not guilty
Dressed in jail jumpsuits, two young parents charged with second-degree murder in the death of their malnourished three-month-old baby pleaded not guilty Wednesday during a brief arraignment transmitted by video to Spokane County Superior Court.
Charles E. Lauderdale and his wife, Deidre R. Lauderdale, both 20, were booked into the Spokane County Jail on Nov. 20 on suspicion of second-degree murder. They have repeatedly declined interview requests.
Their daughter, Katrina Lauderdale, was born in Burns, Ore., on Oct. 24, 2006, with a cleft palate, a facial deformity requiring special feeding procedures. While in Oregon, she was seen weekly by doctors who instructed the couple on how to feed their baby and provided them with special bottle and nipple systems, according to a police affidavit.
But after they moved to Spokane last November when Charles Lauderdale took a new job, the doctor visits stopped. Charles Lauderdale lost his job, and his wife went to work, leaving the baby in her husband’s care when she was working.
Two Oregon doctors concerned about the baby’s failure to gain weight had advised the parents they needed to keep Katrina under continued medical supervision in Spokane, but the couple later told police investigators they had no health insurance, the court affidavit says. No Spokane doctors saw Katrina.
About 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 8, while his wife was at work, Charles Lauderdale called 911 from their home at 2428 E. Boone to report that Katrina was in full cardiac arrest and he was performing CPR on her. Paramedics responded and rushed her to the hospital. The 12-week-old baby, who weighed 3 ounces less that night than her 7-pound birth weight, was pronounced dead on arrival at Sacred Heart Medical Center.
An autopsy indicated the baby had a healing fractured rib and attributed the cause of death to “malnutrition due to neglect.”
“The manner of death is homicide,” the autopsy report concluded.
Katrina had been put to bed that night by her father around 8 p.m., upright in her car seat. She was alone in a bedroom with her bottle propped up by a blanket, according to the police affidavit. When he checked on her about an hour and half later, he found her unresponsive.
The Mead-Johnson bottle, which provides formula to cleft palate babies, is designed for the person feeding the baby to repeatedly squeeze the bottle, “but not for the babies to feed themselves,” said the report signed by Detective Donald Giese of the Spokane Police Department’s major crimes unit.
“A baby is unable to feed itself with this type of bottle/nipple combination and would only burn calories in a futile attempt to get formula from the nipple,” the police affidavit says.
In interviews with police investigators, the Lauderdales claimed to have fed Katrina multiple bottles of formula each day, Giese’s report says.
But doctors involved in the case said that wasn’t possible, the report notes.
“Local medical experts dispute this claim as Katrina suffered from extreme malnutrition from the time she left Burns, Oregon, on about 11/22/06 until her time of death,” the police affidavit says.
Feeding a baby with cleft palate is painstaking and time-consuming, according to the national Cleft Palate Foundation.
“Caregivers should take their time with feeding and burp the baby frequently as babies with cleft palate tend to swallow a lot of air. … Feeding time should be no more than 30 minutes for 2-3 ounces,” the foundation advises on its Web site.
Feeding infants with cleft palates requires close monitoring, even with special feeding devices, said Laurie Vessey, nurse coordinator for the Spokane Regional Health District’s maxillofacial program. The bottle used by the Lauderdales requires the person doing the feeding to squeeze the bottle with every gulp by the infant, Vessey said.
“But with training and proper follow-up, these kids should thrive like any other,” Vessey said.
An omnibus hearing in the case is scheduled Jan. 3, and the trial will be Jan. 22, according to schedules set Wednesday by Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael P. Price.