U.S. teen Tasered while pregnant says baby undergoing tests for seizure disorder

This video of a pregnant teen getting stunned with a Taser by a New York City cop last February went viral. What happened afterward is being reported here for the first time. Dailene Rosario gave birth in June. But baby Raileey isn’t faring well.“I’m in the hospital with her 24-7,” Rosario said. The baby girl is undergoing tests for a possible seizure disorder.“It happens so frequently that now I don’t hesitate when she gets them.”In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Dailene recalls the first time she rushed her 2-month-old daughter to the hospital after the baby started having tremors.

“She was having a coughing fit and with the coughing fit, she stopped breathing and her arms were extended and she was shaking with one of her eyes leaning to the side.”

Her lawyer, Scott Rynecki, says he plans to make the baby’s problems a central issue in a $5 million legal claim Dailene has filed against the NYPD.“Our belief is that there is a case here against the police department and those who utilized this Tase for causing this situation and causing this physical harm to the baby while it was in the womb,” Rynecki said.The police department has declined to comment because of the ongoing investigation. Dailene is among a group of Americans identified as being at “higher risk” from Taser shocks by Axon, the weapon’s manufacturer.They include pregnant women, small children, the elderly, people with heart conditions, and the list goes on. Taken together, that covers a third of the U.S. population, according to a Reuters analysis.Yet police frequently use Tasers on people who fall into the groups the company warns about. Reuters identified more than 1,000 police incidents in the U.S. in which someone died after being stunned with a Taser, often in combination with other force.More than half of those cases involved people who fall into groups identified by the manufacturer as being more susceptible to the weapon’s risks.Axon says, its warnings and training “do not identify any population group as ‘high risk,’ rather, they recognize that certain people may be at increased risk during encounters requiring force.”But the warnings and advisories issued by the company, formerly known as Taser International, note explicitly that “some individuals may be particularly susceptible to the effects” of its weapons.And they identify an array of population groups that may be at increased risk of serious injury or death from the weapons, including people on drugs.In Greenfield, Indiana, when police rolled up on Doug Wiggington, it was clear the 48-year-old man was under the influence. When a second officer arrived, the situation quickly escalated. After a brief struggle, one officer asks for the Taser.Within seconds, Wiggington is stunned in the back. And then again a second time.When officers turned him over, he was unconscious.Wiggington was pronounced dead thirty minutes later. The officer who shocked him hadn’t been re-certified on the Taser in more than three years.The Greenfield police chief says the two officers did not violate department policy and were cleared by an internal investigation and a separate state probe.According to Wiggington’s autopsy, he died from acute cocaine and methamphetamine intoxication.The Taser was listed among contributing factors.Axon has warned since 2005 that people agitated or intoxicated by drugs may face higher risks of medical consequences when shocked by the weapon.When it comes to using Tasers on pregnant women, measuring the risks are impossible.There’s never been a controlled study on shocking a woman who is pregnant. Such tests, by their nature, are too risky to undertake. But since electricity is a known cardiac hazard, doctors say it could pose some risk.Dr. Michael Cackovic is a maternal fetal medicine expert at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “There may be an instantaneous fetal effect when the Taser discharges, but you may not know about that until the baby is a small child.”That’s Brittany Osberry’s one lingering fear when it comes to her son Kannon. The Ohio mother was four and half months pregnant with Kannon in August of 2016 when this altercation with police was captured on cellphone video.Brittany had just pulled into the driveway of her friend’s home to pick up her nieces and nephews. Three officers with the Lima Police Department swarmed her vehicle, saying it was a crime scene.They pulled her out of the car, and stunned her with a Taser in the abdomen after she refused to leave.Within hours, Brittany says she started having stomach cramps. Other complications arose in the weeks that followed. Brittany went into pre-term labor when she was 30 weeks pregnant.

“I was just thinking in the back of my head like these cops, I wonder if they know what I’m going through right now. What are they doing while I’m sitting here giving birth to my baby and he’s looking like that. What are they doing, having dinner with their family?”

Kannon weighed a mere 2 pound 2 ounces when he was born. He spent two months in the NICU.“When I got home, I got calls everyday how he wasn’t eating, he wasn’t taking in the milk like he was supposed to.” Brittany has filed a lawsuit against the Lima Police Department and the officers involved.The police have denied wrongdoing and are trying to get the case dismissed. They did not respond to requests for comment.“You have three officers pinning them against the vehicle, I think that person is subdued. I don’t think there’s a need to do anything else, especially when that person is maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet and says very clearly, four or five times, ‘I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant,’ I don’t think there was a need to use a Taser gun in that situation, no.”Though Kannon appears healthy, he struggles to use his left leg. And doctors aren’t sure if he’ll face long-term developmental problems.“I do have fears. You know, what if he can’t do what other babies do. What if, you know, something happens, and he was born so early. It’s always that what if back there, it’s always going to be that what if.”