WARNING: Some of the details in this story are disturbing. Discretion is advised.
It has been almost a week since Valentino Baker died at just five weeks old.
His parents still don’t know how or why.
“They’re like ‘I’m sorry, he’s passed,'” Andrew Chapman, Valentino’s father, said. “And he’s just dead. No one’s told us what happened.”
The baby’s death is raising questions about how B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development handled the case.
Chyanna Baker, Valentino’s mother, said a social worker came into her hospital room and told her she had to call the ministry based on a suspicion of drug use.
A lawyer working with the family said the claim was never substantiated.
“This child, as far as I understand, did not have medical concerns that would have been the product of drug use during pregnancy,” lawyer Roslyn Chambers said. “So it’s unusual that there would have been any type of notification.”
Valentino was put under a safety plan and eventually taken to live with one of Chyanna’s friends.
Days later on Aug. 6, Surrey RCMP responded to the address to an infant in medical distress.
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Valentino was taken by ambulance to the hospital and was later pronounced dead.
RCMP said the Serious Crime Unit is supporting the coroner’s investigation.
Russ Grabb, former RCMP superintendent, told Global News that this is a heartbreaking case.
He said investigators need to make sure they have all the facts of the case and people should not leap to conclusions.
“We know this from experience that even in the most loving and protective environments, five-week-old infants can tragically die of natural causes. These things do happen from time to time.”
However, in an interview last year, Grabb said he was concerned another child would die from a failure of the province’s Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Grabb still has his notes from May 11, 1993, when he attended the BC Children’s Hospital as the lead major crime investigator in a case of horrific toddler abuse.
The two and a half year old girl, who can only be identified as M.P. because B.C.’s superintendent of Family and Child Services had a family services file with her family at the time, ended up in a coma. According to Grabb, she was not expected to survive.
“If this is yet another Lake Errock, and it won’t be, in my view, because of a failure on the part of a social worker,” he said.
“But again, a systemic failure on the part, not just on this system and certainly not on the part of the cabinet minister, but a failure of leadership at the top, particularly the assistant deputy minister level.
“That’s just my view from firsthand experience.”
The Minister of Children and Family Development, Grace Lore, told Global News that she can’t speak about Valentino’s case specifically.
“I can say that anytime that something happens to a child whose family is receiving services from our ministry, there is a thorough review, a review of practice and decision,” she said.
The family said they have been told it could take two months to get answers as to what happened to Valentino.