Hospital worker fatally broke newborn’s neck — and facility tried to hide it, suit says
The parents of Jahxy Peets, a baby girl who was born prematurely and died months later, are suing an Orlando hospital, saying the facility tried to hide how their daughter's neck was broken in the NICU.
After Gianna Lopera gave birth to Jahxy at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies, she was intubated and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit in June 2022, according to the lawsuit filed Oct. 17 in Orange County, Florida. Jahxy was 24 weeks old when she was born.
A health care provider at the hospital is accused of breaking Jahxy's neck when handling her about two weeks later, then returned Jahxy to her incubator with a broken neck without alerting staff, the complaint says.
This caused "a debilitating spinal cord injury" that paralyzed Jahxy, according to the complaint. At some point, other hospital staff members realized the baby had stopped moving her arms and legs, according to an Oct. 17 news release issued by Rafferty Domnick Cunningham & Yaffa, the law firm representing Jahxy's parents.
Jahxy's broken neck resulted in her death a few months later on Nov. 25, 2022, the complaint says.
"She wasn't able to breathe on her own, her organs started shutting down ... it was just a very slow death," Jaxhy's parents' attorney, Nicole Kruegel, told McClatchy News on Oct. 18.
The baby's injury was revealed after a sensory-motor exam, followed by an MRI of her neck on June 29, 2022, according to the complaint.
"This traumatic event was either not recognized or was not reported and it appears from the records that an attempt to cover up the cause of Jahxy's injuries was made," the complaint says.
Before Lopera and Jahmiah Peets, Jahxy's father, filed their lawsuit, Orlando Health admitted that it was responsible for their daughter's death under Florida Statute 766.207 , which would limit the amount of damages the family could recover in arbitration, according to Kreugel.
"Jahxy's parents are rejecting the admission, choosing instead to fight for justice," the news release said. "While Orlando Health acknowledges their negligence, they refuse to disclose who killed Jahxy Peets."
Orlando Health declined a request for comment from McClatchy News on Oct. 18. A spokeswoman, Kena Lewis, said the health care system "does not comment on pending litigation."
Experts Kreugel consulted with, who reviewed Jahxy's medical records, determined her neck had been broken, telling Kreugel that "there's no way for this to happen accidentally" and that the injury was caused by "extreme excessive force," Kreugel said.
Toward the end of Jahxy's life, her parents were hardly given an explanation about what happened, other than a nurse advising them to hire a lawyer, Kruegel said. The nurse, according to Kruegel, told the parents her injury wasn't "something that should happen," Kruegel said.
Kruegel said the police were never notified about Jahxy's broken neck and that there's been no investigation or incident reports.
"As far as the parents know, this person who did this could have done it intentionally, or if they did it accidentally, they did it because they don't know what they're doing, and they're still in that NICU handling babies as far as we know," Kruegel said.
"The thing that really upsets me about this case is the hospital admitting liability and trying to push this case to arbitration," Kruegel told McClatchy News.
"They're acknowledging the terrible harm they've caused, but only for financial purposes to limit their exposure," she said.
If Jahxy's parents accepted the hospital's admission, Kruegel said "the only information that would have been litigated was the amount of the damages, and we would never ever be able to find out what happened to Jahxy."
"There would have been no closure for this family. And that's the path that the hospital wanted us to take, to just sweep everything under the rug and never find out what really happened," she added.
With their lawsuit, Lopera and Jahmiah Peets are seeking more than $50,000 in damages and demand a jury trial.
On Oct. 21, the parents will hold a news conference outside Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies at 3:30 p.m.
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