People v. McTeer

Leanna, Mariah, and Dionjai

By Leanna McTeer

My son Damion McTeer died October 1, 1998. He was 2 months old when he died, and the diagnosis was Shaken Baby Syndrome. I never in my heart believed this diagnosis had been true. His father, Dionjai who was accused, and later convicted of this loved his children very much, he took very good care of both Damion and his sister Mariah. He was one of those dads who loved to be involved with the kids, he feed them, give them baths, change diapers and play with them. Dionjai and I have been together for 8 years now. And are struggling to put the pieces together of what happened on that day. He still has a very close relationship with our daughter. Our son was admitted to the hospital the day before he died for an enlarged liver and a heart murmur. They kept him overnight, ran tests and came up with the diagnosis of peripheral pulmonary stenosis. They discharged him on 9/30/98. But before they discharged him they gave him his 2-month vaccines even though at birth the pediatrician said he was at 36 weeks and not a full term pregnancy. The case summary following this gives a little more insight into the whole life or our precious baby boy. And I hope soon that the people who are charging innocent people with a crime like this will start educating themselves on the different diseases and other medical diagnoses that are similar to shaken baby syndrome and go over all medical reports and investigate all other avenues to make sure another innocent man will not be charged and have to go through what our family went through. Our family now is doing well despite the circumstances and will continue to research and find out exactly what happened to Damion.

 

Mariah, Dionjai, and Damion

Case Summary

Pregnancy-
I actually got pregnant soon after my Depo-Provera shot had run out. At 3 months of pregnancy I then started to bleed, I went to the doctor's and they thought I might be having a spontaneous abortion, I ended up being put on bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy and towards the end of my pregnancy was having re-occurring urinary tract infections, to sometimes I was in so much pain I couldn't even walk. He put me on Macrobid and had given me darvocet for the pain. The doctor then decided to take the baby a little bit earlier but still said I was at a full term pregnancy.

Damion at Birth- At birth Damion didn't have any known problems except for the jaundice. Although I was not able to see him for the first 3 hrs after he was born because they said they needed to stabilize him, they had said his breathing was irregular. In the nursery the nurse had told Dionjai that he looked more premature than the OB had suggested because of the Yellowish film all over him. And in the medical reports it does show that the pediatrician has a different date then what the OB had thought. Which put him in the premature range. He was 6lbs 12 oz which was also smaller than my daughter Mariah who was 7lbs and 10 oz. When he came home from the hospital right from the start he never slept as much as my first daughter did. He was fussy a lot and didn't feed well from the beginning. But the pediatrician never thought it was anything significant maybe colic, so I breast fed him and gave him formula, the formula's we switched many times.

Damion

Damion at 2 months- The only time damion could sleep is if I was holding him in an upward position and once we did lay him down he'd sleep about 20-30 minutes at the most. He never ate that much he was still drinking four oz bottles at 2 months.A couple of days before his 2 month check up Damion had a twitching episode where, his hand and leg just started twitching on I believe it was his right hand side. Me and Dionjai where alone and we both got scared I ran next door and got my neighbor and she picked him up and rocked him she saw it but said it was probably just the hiccups but I should mention it to the doctor. He never cried when he was doing this and it just stopped after a couple minutes. A couple days later was his 2-month checkup and when I took him in the doctor said the same thing that it was probably just hiccups, but I couldn't see how that could be since it was only one side. At that check-up the pediatrician noticed that he had a heart-murmur and asked if she had ever told me that before, which she hadn't and told me not to worry, which I was because no one in my family has ever had one of those, And take him to the hospital and have the cardiologist look at him. She was going to give him his vaccinations at that time but didn't because she had said he had a fever but she didn't know where it was coming from and it could have been an infection. 2 days later I took him to Riverside County Regional Medical Center, he was under my medi-cal at the time so I had to just go through the emergency room. The pediatrician had given me a prescription with what she thought he needed done. Which I gave to the hospital. When it came time to assess him in the emergency room, again I gave the doctor the information about his twitching episode and again they told me it was probably hiccups but at that time they said they could also hear the heart murmur and that it also felt like he had an enlarged liver. At that time another pediatric doctor came down and said that he felt the same so they decided to admit him and run tests. They kept him over night and did a bunch of tests. And after 2 more doctors looked at him they said that the liver was an appropriate age for an infant. That day they did the echo and for this they sedated him. They gave the diagnosis of peripheral pulmonary stenosis, and where going to discharge him with instructions to see a cardiologist in a couple of days. Before discharging him they gave him his vaccinations. That day he left the hospital he was so content, he actually slept for longer than he normally did and wasn't as fussy as he normally was, and I wondered if that was from the medications they had given him or not. That night when my sister held him she felt him wheezing a little bit. But it wasn't all that bad he woke up about 4 times that night and me and Dionjai each took turns getting up with him. The next morning he was still a little congested and his fussiness was back, but I didn't worry too much because babies usually are fussy after vaccinations. Dionjai ended up having to watch Damion and Mariah because I had to go to a medi-cal appointment to continue to be eligible for medi-cal. And I couldn't miss it because of all the new problems damion was having. No kids where allowed and that is why Dionjai stayed home and watched them.

Day of Damion's Death:
Dionjai dropped me off at the welfare office and went home with the 2 kids; the welfare office was not even 5 min away from where I lived. I called him on a break and could hear Damion crying in the background, he was crying, and dionjai said that Damion didn't want anything he was just really fussy, wasn't hungry, didn't have a dirty diaper nothing, and he said he was kind of limp like he didn't really want to do anything, I told him to give him some Tylenol and if the problem still persisted that we could take him to the doctor when I got home. About an hour after this Dionjai came running in with both kids in his hands Mariah in one hand and Damion in his car seat. And said we have to go to the hospital something is wrong with Damion. I looked down and instantly knew something was wrong he didn't look himself at all and was really pale. I followed Dionjai out to the car but by the time we go to the car noticed that there was something really wrong he had started to turn blue I grabbed him out of his car seat and ran back into the welfare office with him and screamed for someone to call 911. A lady came from the back who knew CPR and started doing CPR on him, the ambulance was there and as soon as they got there wouldn't let us anywhere near our baby, they separated us and questioned us and then left with Damion, not letting either one of us go with him. We had to drive ourselves to the hospital, which was about 30 min. away. By the time we got there they had taken us in a little room and told us Damion had died. We had given the er doctor the sealed envelopes that the doctor had given us just the day before but that doctor didn't even read them he just told us we should get a lawyer. He had also told us that Damion had bilateral pneumonia when he died. Which in the autopsy report showed interstitial pneumonitis, I'm not sure if that is the same thing. But couldn't tell us why, We questioned about him being released from the hospital just the night before but the dr said he wouldn't really know anything more until they did the autopsy. Then deputy coroner came out, and talked to us for a while as we said our goodbyes to Damion. That next day she had called and asked if anyone had told us he had jaundice and I told her he had it when he was born but no one informed us after that.

What happened? According to Dionjai (What Dionjai told me happened): Damion would not stop crying he was crying pretty hard and dionjai said he had tried everything feeding him, changing him rocking him and nothing worked and said he dropped him on the bed from what he states he was standing and we had a regular full size bed normal height, and damion still cried he said he then tried to comfort him again and damion cried and then all of a sudden stopped crying and dionjai checked to see if he was still breathing because after all that crying he just stopped and he said he was and he immediately got in the car and brought him to where I was because I was so close and he felt like there was something wrong with him.

October 6, 1998 the autopsy:
We were making funeral arrangements and stuff for our son when we got a call to go down to the police station. I guess that detective was there during the autopsy they made us bring Mariah down there with us and wouldn't let my parents in the police station at all. On the way my dad told us just to tell what happened because we had nothing to hide, no lawyer, just us. They interrogated me first which lasted about 8hrs. Yelling and screaming at me that someone murdered my son and if it wasn't me I had to tell them who did it. 8hrs of the same question over and over, at one point they made me sign a thing saying that Mariah had to go to cps for her own care I was so distraught and confused and scared I didn't know what to do, I never got a chance to talk to Dionjai after that, I never felt like I could leave that place, they never read me my rights. I agreed to take a lie detector test which was in san Bernardino so I had to ride all the way up there in a cop car. Then When I got there and they started they came in and told me Dionjai "confessed". Never once did I believe it nor do I believe it now. My guess as to what Dionjai "confessed" to was what I told you above which is what he told me, he doesn't believe what he did could have harmed Damion. At some of the pre-trial motions it came out that the detectives had zeroed in on Dionjai the whole time. Followed us everywhere we went. And when it was brought up that this had happened the lead detective got on the stand and lied that he didn't and didn't give any orders for anyone to. Then his partner Detective got on the stand and said that they did and the lead detective was the one that ordered it. That along with Dionjai's interrogation, which the transcripts didn't match up with the audio, so much of the tape had been completely erased the "confession" was thrown out. And all of the sudden the D.A. wanted to make this deal. It was the first deal offered and it was taken under advisory of both the court and Public Defender.

With all the research I have done on this I have seen some major coincidences with other shaken-baby cases. Both in regards to me having taken the macrobid in my last month of pregnancy and damion getting all his vaccines and dying not even 24 hrs later. Along with that a lot of what Dionjai told me that happened those last hours are similar to what I have read in regards to vaccine damage. I really have never felt that Dionjai could have done this; he loves his kids very much and always paid so much attention to them and helped with them.

Dionjai and Leanna

 

 

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