A Florida woman was arrested on January 18, 2023 and charged with aggravated manslaughter and neglect of a child after police accused her of starving her newborn twins, causing one of them to die from severe malnutrition.
Police were called to a house near Boca Raton, Florida on March 17, 2022, almost one year ago, with reports of a sick infant. When responding officers got to the residence, they found officers from the Fire Rescue team attempting to save a one-month-old child outside the home’s front door, according to an arrest affidavit.
The baby girl, who was not breathing, was unresponsive and did not have a pulse. She was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Delaila Pino LaSalle, 23, told officers that she found her daughter unresponsive when she woke up to feed the twins. LaSalle, originally from Puerto Rico, was living in her mother’s home with her three other children. She said she ran and woke her mother up, who then called 911 and started CPR on the baby.
However, after further investigations, authorities believed LaSalle was responsible for her daughter’s death. The baby was born with some medical problems but recovered. According to the police, LaSalle did not properly care for her after the baby’s initial recovery and didn’t follow the doctor’s instructions.
The twins were born on February 5, 2022, and one of them was born with a left cleft lip, upper respiratory distress, pneumonia, and a hole in her heart. She stayed in the NICU unit for about a couple of weeks before doctors finally discharged her.
Doctors said the baby girl was doing well at first, but LaSalle did not go to a follow-up appointment after the baby’s discharge.
One of the doctors said that the infant was admitted to the NICU ward because of respiratory issues, which went away within a week. Initially, the baby was tube fed, but they started bottle-feeding her without any problems as she recovered.
The hospital discharged her because she was doing considerably well, including breathing normally, eating, and gaining weight.
According to the affidavit, the doctors were concerned about the mother’s behavior, saying she refused to follow instructions.
The Florida medical examiner ruled the baby’s death a homicide, and that her cause of death was malnutrition. He ruled out the possibility of the child’s preexisting conditions causing her death.
A week after her death, the other twin, a boy, was taken to the hospital, where doctors determined that the baby was suffering from severe starvation. The Children and Families department has since removed all the children from home. The boy is doing much better in foster care.
LaSalle is held on an $18,000 bond.
