The parents of an infant girl who died weeks after being born prematurely in 2022 have filed a lawsuit against an Orlando, Florida, hospital, claiming their daughter’s neck was broken by an employee at the facility who covered it up and never called police.
The grief-stricken relatives of Jahxy Peets said they “deserve answers” and demanded justice during a press conference outside of Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies on Monday, where the newborn’s neck was snapped in the NICU, resulting in the girl’s paralysis and eventual death.
“I never got a chance to hear my daughter cry. She never got a chance to meet her siblings or her family. We never celebrated a single milestone. We only held her four times in her entire life,” the devastated mom said.
According to the lawsuit filed Oct. 17 in Orange County, Gianna Lopera gave birth to Jahxy at 24 weeks on June 13, 2022. Following a successful birth, Jahxy was intubated and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit.
The complaint alleges that two weeks later, a health care provider at the hospital broke Jahxy’s neck while handling the infant.
The suit claims that the provider returned the injured baby to her incubator while saying nothing to her supervisors about what happened.
Eventually, other hospital staff noticed that the baby had stopped moving her arms and legs, as stated in a news release from Rafferty Domnick Cunningham & Yaffa, the law firm representing Jahxy’s parents.
Jahxy’s injury was confirmed after a sensory-motor exam and an MRI of her neck on June 29, 2022, which determined she sustained “a debilitating spinal cord injury” that left her paralyzed, according to the lawsuit.
While aware of the incident, the hospital never identified the employee responsible.
Nicole Kruegel, the family’s attorney, said the police were never informed about Jahxy’s broken neck and that there has been no investigation or incident reports regarding the matter.
“As far as the parents know, this person who did this could have done it intentionally, or if they did it accidentally, they did it because they don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re still in that NICU handling babies as far as we know,” Kruegel said, according to McClatchy News.
“In any other circumstance, a parent would have the right to know who was responsible for the death of their child and be granted the opportunity to pursue justice. Orlando Health is using a loophole in the law to diminish the life and death of a baby girl,” she added.
Lopera and Jahmiah Peets are seeking more than $50,000 in damages and have requested a jury trial.
The lawsuit alleges that Orlando Health was complicit by delaying notification to the parents for weeks after becoming aware of the incident and providing only vague explanations.
“This traumatic event was either not recognized or was not reported, and it appears from the records that an attempt to cover up the cause of Jahxy’s injuries was made,” the complaint states.
The child survived the injury for a few months but died on Nov. 25, 2022, according to the complaint.
“She wasn’t able to breathe on her own, her organs started shutting down … it was just a very slow death,” said Kruegel.
Meanwhile, experts who reviewed Jahxy’s medical records told Kreugel that “there’s no way for this to happen accidentally” and that the injury was caused by “extreme excessive force,” Kreugel said.
In the final days of Jahxy’s life, her parents received little information about what had occurred other than a nurse advising them to hire a lawyer. According to Kruegel, the nurse remarked that Jahxy’s injury was “not something that should happen.”
Before Lopera and Peets filed the lawsuit, Orlando Health acknowledged its culpability for the girl’s death, which under Florida law would cap the damages the family could recover in arbitration, according to Kreugel.
“The thing that really upsets me about this case is the hospital admitting liability and trying to push this case to arbitration,” Kruegel told McClatchy News. “They’re acknowledging the terrible harm they’ve caused, but only for financial purposes to limit their exposure,” she said.
Kruegel explained that if Jahxy’s parents had accepted the hospital’s admission, “the only information that would have been litigated was the amount of the damages, and we would never ever be able to find out what happened to Jahxy.”
Jahxy’s parents said that wasn’t enough and have indicated they would challenge the hospital’s legal maneuvering to shield itself.
“While Orlando Health acknowledges their negligence, they refuse to disclose who killed Jahxy Peets,” the lawsuit noted.
Kruegel emphasized that the family needed closure after a devastating tragedy.
“There would have been no closure for this family. And that’s the path that the hospital wanted us to take, to just sweep everything under the rug and never find out what really happened,” she said.
Kena Lewis, a spokesperson for the hospital, declined to comment on the matter, saying the health care system “does not comment on pending litigation.”
