‘My son’s not breathing’: Father done raging 911 call before toddler’s meningitis death

The father of a toddler who died of bacterial meningitis called 911 given his son wasn’t respirating though declined an offer of an ambulance, an Alberta justice listened Tuesday.

David and Collet Stephan are indicted of unwell to yield a necessaries of life to 19-month-old Ezekiel in 2012.

Although surprising in bland parlance, a word “necessaries” — not “necessities” — is the term a authorised complement uses.

The integrate primarily treated him with herbal and healthy remedies instead of holding him to a doctor.

This is a second hearing for a Stephans. A jury found them guilty in 2016, though a Supreme Court overturned a philosophy final year and systematic a new trial. This one is before a decider alone.

A raging 911 call from David Stephan was played in justice as partial of a Crown’s case.

“My son’s not breathing,” pronounced Stephan, who struggled to give a user an residence that her mechanism would recognize.

“My son has stopped breathing. He’s not choking. He’s been ill for a small while here.”

I told her to get him to puncture right away.– Tracey Tannis, naturopath

The operator, Carroll Moore, asked Stephan if he was behaving CPR. He replied that his mom was.

“He’s respirating a small bit improved right now,” Stephan said. “He’s doing it on his own.”

Stephan combined that his son had had croup for a week though overcame it.

The father pronounced he would call 911 again if there was a problem.

“If we need us we call us back, OK?” pronounced a operator.

Moore testified that there was an ambulance accessible in circuitously Glenwood, Alta., though given a Stephans declined one, a ask did not go to a dispatcher.

Representing himself

David Stephan, who is behaving as his possess lawyer, asked Moore if it isn’t custom that an ambulance be automatically dispatched when a child has stopped respirating to make certain all is all right.

“Is that satisfactory to contend that is a case?” asked Stephan.

“That would be a box if a tourist didn’t decrease a ambulance,” Moore replied.

“So we take instructions from a particular on a line?” asked Stephan.

“Correct,” Moore responded.

“In a conditions like this we didn’t see it required to yield superintendence to myself on a phone?” pronounced Stephan.

“We didn’t get to that stage. You struggled so most with a residence [that)] by a time we found a plcae for a residence we pronounced a baby was breathing,” Moore answered.

Testimony of naturopath

The initial declare Tuesday was a naturopath from Lethbridge, Alta., who testified that she endorsed a Stephans take their child to emergency.

Tracey Tannis told justice that Collet Stephan had called her hospital and told an partner she was endangered her son had viral meningitis. Viral meningitis can be reduction critical than bacterial meningitis, though it is still deliberate a critical illness.

Tannis pronounced she told a partner to advise a mom to take a child to emergency.

“I told her to get him to puncture right divided given viral meningitis is deadly,” Tannis said

A few days later, a hospital sole an echinacea tincture, an herbal remedy, to Collet.

Tannis pronounced she doesn’t remember indeed articulate to Collet Stephan when she came into a clinic, though she does remember giving a advice.

“It usually resonates in my mind given that’s a formidable infection.”

Defence counsel Shawn Buckley suggested a naturopath usually endorsed a child see a alloy and that Tannis “reconstructed” her story after a child died.

After Ezekiel died, the Stephans moved from Glenwood, Alta., to Nelson, B.C., with their 3 other boys: Ezra, Ephraim and Enoch.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/david-collet-stephan-trial-naturopath-1.5162271?cmp=rss