Carthage couple charged with child abuse, starving infant
A couple from Carthage, Missouri, is facing child abuse charges after investigators say they starved their malnourished one-year-old son.
The accusations against Braxton Blevins and Emily Katz come after a one-year-old male juvenile was admitted to a Carthage hospital for severe malnutrition, starvation, recurrent infections, and failure to thrive.
Court documents say medical personnel reported the juvenile had been hospitalized multiple times since birth for similar conditions.
The juvenile currently remains hospitalized under medical care.
In each instance, when placed under hospital-supervised care and fed according to the prescribed protocol, the juvenile gained weight and improved. Hospital staff stated this demonstrated the victim’s medical complications were treatable with proper care and nutrition, which Katz was trained on and said she was providing
Despite Katz’s claims that they were following the feeding plan at home, officers discovered between ten (10) and twenty (20) unused bags of the juvenile’s Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) stored in the family’s refrigerator.
Another Medical staff advised that the juvenile required one TPN bag per day, delivered weekly. One TPN bag per day makes up 79% of the victim’s total daily caloric intake. The presence of excess TPN supplies indicated the juvenile was not receiving the prescribed nutrition.
During a subsequent interview with Blevins, he admitted he was aware of the victim’s critical medical needs, including daily TPN administration through a central line, and acknowledged missing multiple feedings, particularly during the final month of care, due to marijuana use and falling asleep. Blevins admitted he recognized he could not meet the victim’s medical needs, but continued custody due to fear of losing rights to their other child.
During a subsequent interview, Katz admitted struggling with maintaining cleanliness in the home and acknowledged improper care of her infant son’s central line and GI tube. Medical records showed that during three separate periods under Katz’s and Braxton Blevins’ care, the victim suffered significant weight loss totaling over 5.5 pounds, despite documented weight gains when hospitalized and placed on the same feeding regimen.
Katz offered no reasonable explanation for the failures in care and terminated the interview after being advised of the charges.