ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — Whenever St. Louis County’s Chief Forensic Investigator Mike Tarticchio gets called to a home where an infant has died, he said he pretty much knows what to expect.
“It's pretty common to see that the cribs are not in use,” he said. “Then there’s co-sleeping."
“People think that it's OK to do it, that it's not going to happen to them. Their parents did it. But the statistics prove otherwise. You're playing with fire if you're co-sleeping with a child,” he added.
Tarticchio is a member of the St. Louis County Child Fatality Review Board. Every Missouri county has one, and they include prosecutors, police, social service agencies and medical examiner staff that meet monthly to review cases.
The I-Team requested statistics on child fatalities and found the numbers have been relatively stagnant for decades.
“What makes these cases so tragic is that they are preventable,” Tarticchio said.
And they aren’t letting up.
Statistics the I-Team requested show there’s only been about a 20% drop in the total number of infant deaths in Missouri for the past 20 years.
Nationwide, the Washington Post reports cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) plummeted by more than 50% after the 1994 start of the Safe to Sleep campaign, which urged parents to put their babies on their backs at bedtime and keep pillows, bumper pads, blankets, stuffed animals and anything that might pose a suffocation risk out of cribs.
But the decline stopped.
About 3,400 babies younger than 1 still suddenly and unexpectedly die each year, according to the national health statistics.
Tarticchio said he believes some of the reason is generational.
“Older generations will tell you the safest place for a child is face down so they don't aspirate on spit up,” Tarticchio said. “Well, the science proves otherwise."
“The gag reflex will prevent that child from aspirating. It's when they're face down that they're it put into an unsafe sleep environment, and the risk of suffocation goes up greatly.”
St. Louis County Medical Examiner Dr. Gershom Norfleet says race plays a role, too.
“Black children are four to seven times more likely to die from unsafe sleep-related conditions, as opposed to white children in St. Louis County,” he said. “Now, with all that data that I just shared, it could be striking, it could be very concerning."
“But what is important is that there are preventive strategies to be able to address those numbers.”
Norfleet is also a member of the Child Fatality Review Board.
“The purpose of all this is to review these cases, learn from them and also develop any strategies for prevention in the future,” he said.
In St. Louis County, the board found there was a 22% increase in suffocation cases. During the last nine years, there have been 82 unsafe sleep cases reported. That’s about nine per year, Norfleet said.
“Community partners, churches, social media platforms, any type of modality that can be used to disseminate information to the most vulnerable, who can benefit the most from this information would be the best way to approach this issue,” he said.
Tarticchio said he agrees.
“Just like the 'Click It or Ticket' campaign or any other campaign that has made impacts in the community, I think that this just needs to be a priority,” Tarticchio said. “This message needs to get out that there is a right and a wrong way for a child to be laid down for bed.”
He said he's tired of knowing what to expect when they’re not.
For a list of organizations that provide free baby cribs to families in need, click here.
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