Baby died of suffocation while sleeping with family, coroner finds

A baby girl suffocated while sleeping with her parents and big sister on a mattress on the family’s lounge room floor, a coroner investigating the child’s death has revealed.

Hobart Coroner Olivia McTaggart found a baby girl, sleeping with her family in a cold house on a mattress on the floor, had died from suffocation.

A SEVEN-week-old baby girl died from suffocation while sleeping on an adult mattress shared by three other people, a coroner has found.

In the early hours of September 1, 2016, the baby was “crying and settled” so her father took her out of her cot and onto a mattress on the lounge room floor, Coroner Olivia McTaggart said in her findings published on Wednesday.

The baby’s father said he placed her on his left side towards the outer edge of the mattress, with the child’s mother and her three-year-old daughter to his right.

But when he woke at 7am, the man said the infant had moved to a position between him and the three-year-old girl.

After checking on his partner’s little boy in his bedroom, the man came back and noticed the baby had “purple circles around her cheeks”.

He woke his partner, and the pair called an ambulance after realising the baby wasn’t breathing, with paramedics arriving about 7.40am.

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An intensive care paramedic told the coronial investigation that when he arrived, the child was stiff with rigor mortis and that she “had been deceased for some time”.

He also said the house was cold, the baby’s cot was “filthy, bare and generally unclean”, and the mattress on the floor didn’t have any sheets.

Two police constables who arrived about 8.20am later said the house was dirty and untidy, with “food, dirty dishes and nappies strewn around the house and on the floor” and the bedrooms in disarray.

They also said they found ashtrays with cigarette butts throughout the house, which smelt like smoke, and noted the baby’s cot mattress and the mattress on the lounge room floor were stained and dirty.

An autopsy was conducted the following day, with a forensic pathologist finding no immediate, apparent cause of death, but found evidence of bronchopneumonia.

Following a coronial investigation, the pathologist said the baby may have died due to an unsafe sleeping environment with someone in the bed possibly “overlying” the child – accidentally smothering her as they slept.

Ms McTaggart found the baby was likely restricted by another person in bed, possibly her father or by bedding.

She added the baby’s inability to breathe was possibly compounded by the fact she was born premature and suffered reflux and bronchopneumonia.