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26716: Hermantin(News)Couple sought in baby's death by vodka (fwd)



From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Nov. 29, 2005


FORT LAUDERDALE
Couple sought in baby's death by vodka
Fort Lauderdale police are looking for a couple they say killed their infant daughter by feeding her large amounts of vodka as a cure for colic. 
BY WANDA J. DeMARZO
wdemarzo@herald.com

The tiny baby just wouldn't stop crying or fussing.

Makeisha Dantus, just 3 months old, was colicky.
So her parents, Mardala Derival and Mackenson Dantus, allegedly tried a home remedy they claimed is used to calm cranky babies: vodka.
''They said they used vodka because the baby was running a fever and was very cranky,'' said Fort Lauderdale Detective Katherine Collins.
But authorities said the Fort Lauderdale couple ended up killing their child by forcing her to ingest the equivalent of at least three eight-ounce glasses of 80-proof alcohol.
The parents, who have since fled, are wanted on charges of aggravated manslaughter.
Detectives said family members, a physician and others said they never heard of feeding a baby vodka, or any type of alcohol to soothe colic.
But the practice of giving inconsolable babies alcohol -- in smaller doses -- isn't unheard of, according to experts.
''Parents have used alcohol to quiet a baby for years,'' said former Broward County Medical Examiner Dr. Ronald Wright. ``And they've used morphine and other things that we know now aren't good for babies. It does work, but it shouldn't be used at that level.''
Makeisha's parents told police that over a three- to four-week period, they fed their daughter an alcohol concoction to help her sleep: a bottle filled with so many parts water, so many parts sugar and a shot of vodka. 

On Valentine's Day 2004, Makeisha was found unconscious.
Her father, 25, called police to their home at 831 NE 14th Ct. after discovering the baby wasn't moving or breathing. 

MEDICAL FINDINGS
The medical examiner's office later concluded the baby had a blood-alcohol level of .47.
That amount of alcohol in a baby weighing anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds would be the equivalent of a 160-pound person ''chug-a-lugging 18 beers'' or three eight-ounce glasses of 80-proof alcohol, said Wright, a forensic consultant who had no role in this case.
The autopsy report also found that before the infant's death, she was quickly fed lethal doses of alcohol, which led to hepatic steatosis, signs of liver degeneration.
''What she was showing was fat in the liver, which indicates long-term use of alcohol,'' Wright said. He said the degeneration means more than one-third of the baby's calories were from alcohol.
''This will be an interesting case, because now the jury gets to figure out whether the parents did something criminal, or were they really . . . uninformed?'' Wright said.
Collins, the Fort Lauderdale detective, said the parents told them they learned the remedy in their homeland of Haiti. But Haitian community leaders and a doctor trained in Haiti told police they were unfamiliar with any such remedy. 

TRADITIONAL REMEDY

The use of alcohol to calm colicky babies was once accepted practice.
For years, mothers gave their colicky babies British gripe water, a famous and widely used ''cure-all'' for colic. The original product, Woodward's Gripe Water, contained around 8 percent alcohol, but most modern formulations do not.
''One patient had a master's degree in biology, and she told me, `It's wonderful, whenever they give the gripe-water the baby sleeps,'' a pediatric specialist with St. John's Family Health Center in Queens told The New York Times recently.
The formulation was banned in this country in 1982; in 1993, the FDA ordered automatic detention of all shipments of gripe water because it fit the definition of a new drug that didn't have FDA approval. But gripe water remains a popular home remedy and is available on the Internet.
Even on the big screen, parents can be seen adding a little booze to a crying baby's bottle. In the film Meet the Fockers, Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) tells her son Greg (Ben Stiller) to put a dab of rum in Little Jack's milk to make him stop crying. Later, when everyone returns home, they find the rum bottle glued to Little Jack's hands (he was playing with glue and then grabbed the bottle).
Still, the amount of alcohol given to Makeisha was excessive, police and experts agree.
''No one thinks about how tiny babies are and that they metabolize alcohol the same way that adults do,'' Wright said.
Putting the case together took time. Police said the toxicology reports were time-consuming and that the mother, 22, was not cooperative. But earlier this year, homicide detectives turned the case over to the State Attorney's Office and on Oct. 28 issued arrest warrants for the couple, who by then had fled. They are believed to be hiding in the Fort Lauderdale or Miami-Dade area.
Anyone with information about the couple is asked to call Fort Lauderdale detective John Curcio at 954-828-5529 or Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-495-8477.