This is the shocking moment a teenage mother attempts to smother her baby in a hospital.
Hidden video cameras caught 18-year-old Shantaniqua Scott place a blanket over her four-month-old son’s mouth. Moments later she clamps her hand over his face and mouth as the newborn baby kicks and struggles for life as his air supply is cut off.
SEE THE VIDEO HERE – WARNING – GRAPHIC
By the time the teenage single mother removes her hand her son Raymond’s body appears limp. Seconds later, with alarms going off indicating the baby had stopped breathing, doctors and nurses rush in to resuscitate him.
The shocking footage was played to a shocked courtroom in Texas where Scott is on trial for attempting to kill her newborn son. Jurors sat in rapt silence as the video tape recorded at the Cook Children’s Medical Centre in July 2010 was played in a Fort Worth courtroom.
They had heard how Scott’s son had been taken into hospital after he was reported to have suddenly stopped breathing. Doctors who examined him at first thought he suffered from severe acid reflux. He underwent surgery to correct the condition – when acid from the stomach backs up into the oesophagus – and was released from hospital.
But two days later he was back in the emergency unit after he mysteriously stopped breathing. Staff suspected he was the victim of abuse and set up a hidden camera on the ward where the baby was recovering. Scott was caught peering into her son’s cot and placing a blanket over his face for up to 20 seconds.
When a nurse briefly enters the room Scott paces the floor and appears to check her cell phone. Then, when left alone she reaches into the cot and with her bare hand clamps it over her baby son’s mouth and nose. The video records her trying to suffocate her son for one minute and 14 seconds.
Heart and lung specialist Dr Sami Heed said the baby would have died but for the intervention of staff when his monitors sounded an alarm. He told the court: ‘I still get emotional. I get night sweats when I think about it. I take care of the sickest of the sick. His life was being put in danger by someone who was supposed to take care of him.’
Jurors were told that Scott confessed to police she no longer wanted to care for her son and in a taped confession admitting smothering him. Sgt Pedro Criado of the Fort Worth Police Department said Scott told detectives she didn’t want her child anymore. ‘She just basically stated that she just wanted to go back to that carefree attitude she had before she had the child,’ Criado said. She also said it was hard being a teenage mother, complained that the baby’s father didn’t help and added that she didn’t want to deal with the stress anymore.
Doctors said it’s not known if the child will have any lasting injuries from the lack of oxygen. He is being looked after by social workers. Scott faces life imprisonment if convicted of two counts of causing serious bodily injury to a child.
