Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
At our Personal Injury Law Office in Sacramento, we can face the most horrific of acts carried out against an individual. I was reading the news today, when I came across one of those acts in the nearby area of Auburn, California. The story told of a case against a woman for allegedly killing a 16-month old child through shaken baby syndrome.
The accused woman, Veronica Salcedo, was babysitting three children the night of the incident. The youngest child, Hannah, is the center of the case. According to News 10, prosecutors are calling for Veronica to be tried for “second degree murder and child abuse causing death or great bodily injury”. It is their claim that Veronica shook Hannah so violently that the child ended up in the hospital on life support and died two days later.
On the opposing side, defendants state this is not what happened at all, but rather the cause of Hannah’s death was from a neurological undiagnosed illness. They state that there is evidence that the child’s brain was swelling the night before the incident. However, doctors never did the neurological testing for the illness, so there is no way of truly knowing.
Veronica did state that she shook Hannah. However, she states that it was only slightly and just to get her to come to when she found her unresponsive. Supposedly, Veronica had confessed to shaking the child harder when police first spoke to her, but has now withdrawn that on account of a language barrier (Veronica only speaks Spanish).
Shaken Baby Syndrome is child abuse. Shaken Baby Syndrome, or SBS, occurs when a child is shaken hard enough that their brain bounces inside the child’s skull, causing damage or death. This diagnosis usually will occur in children two years or younger. At this age children have weak necks, large, heavy heads, and developing brains. These characteristics put together make an instance of strong shaking very threatening to a baby’s life.
If you have a child who has been diagnosed with SBS because of someone else’s abusive behavior, please call me at the Law Offices of Moseley Collins.
To read the full news article, please click here.
For more information on Shaken Baby Syndrome, please click here.