Baby Zayden Veal died when he reached the Bendigo Health emergency department. This is his mother Casey Veal’s account of what happened on the day of his death.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
On the morning of Friday the 15th of June 2012 I was woken up at some time between 6.30am and 7am by Xavier who came in. I gave him my iPhone to play with he went to the couch in the lounge room. I got up out of bed and Xavier came back into the room and said to me “doors open, doors open’’.
I had the portable baby monitor with me.
I got up and had a look and noticed that the back sliding door was open so I shut it because it was freezing and then I went to the front door and saw that it was open. The back door was open all the way to the point where it would almost get stuck. The front door was just open. I don’t remember if we locked the doors last night or not but we don’t normally use that door and it would normally be locked. We would normally use the back sliding door as the main door because we park our cars around the back.
I then shut this door and then looked in Xavier’s room and it looked fine. I stuck my head in Zayden’s room which was dark. The door was slightly ajar which was normally not like that. I would normally pull the door shut to keep the warm air in. My baby monitor was saying out of range so I went back out of the room and flicked the hallway light on so I would not wake him. I then checked the baby monitor and found that the plug had been pulled out of the power board and way lying on the carpet. I put the plug back in and got the monitor to work again.
I could not hear anything from Zayden so I left him sleep and then went into the third bedroom where the boxes were and noticed the door was open. This was unusual as we normally have the door shut. This door was wide open as far as it could go. This door was always shut so that the kids could not unpack the boxes that were in there and there was a dodgey gas heater in there that would smell like it was leaking.
"I also noticed the door to the bathroom was open and this was always closed at night to keep the heat in"
I then had a look around the rest of the house and noticed that the cheese bag which we put our cheese in was out of the fridge and on the bench and it still had cheese in it. I thought that this was weird and I think that I put it back in the fridge and then thinking it was strange, took it back out and put it back on the bench.
I then realised that our wallets were gone and I went into the bedroom and asked Matt where his wallet was. He jumped out of bed asking what was going on and I told him that I thought that we might have been broken into. I then rang the Bendigo police station and told them what had happened. The police officer I spoke to told me that they would be out in an hour. The police officer told me not to look around anymore so I sat there and played with Xavier for a few minutes.
I didn’t notice anything else missing inside the house. I went outside and looked at my car and noticed that the passenger door was wide open which was not how I left it. I went over and had a bit of a look but didn’t touch anything. I looked in through the door and the glove box ws down. It looked like somebody had been through there.
Matt said to me that I should go and wake Zayden up so that it was not the police who woke him up.
I walked up to his room to go and get him and he was still really still and quiet which I thought was really strange when I was walking towards him.
I walked up to the cot and he was lying on his back and to the side and his face was pointed towards the wardrobes and his blanked was perfectly straight across his face, up to around his nose. I looked and thought that could not be right because it would annoy his nose and he rolled around and would not keep blankets on.
He only had the one blanket on top of him not all three and was laying up at the top of the cot which is not where he normally sleeps, he normally sleeps at the bottom of the cot.
He was right up straight with his head at the top of the bars and looked like he had been been placed there.
I didn't notice where the other two blankets were, I was paying more attention to Zayden.
"I went over to Zayden and touched his shoulders to wake him and he didn't feel right. He didn't respond like he normally would"
I shook him around his ribs and his shoulders to get him to respond but he wouldn't so I pulled the blanket back and saw all the blood and started screaming for Matt.
The blood right to where his head was and it would have been under his head and under him.
It was a big pool of blood and it looked like it had clumped up.
I picked him up and held him behind his head and carried him out of the room.
He was still in the clothes that I put him to bed in.
I was screaming 'ring an ambulance' and met Matt in the hallway.
He lost it when he saw me and I told him to go and grab Xavier and take him down the other end.
I was screaming to call the ambulance and Matt was screaming and crying.
I ended up calling the ambulance, I think it was off Matt's phone and put it on loud speaker so I could understand what the lady said to do with Zayden.
I talked to the lady and Matt took Xavier up the back room.
I laid him on the floor on a rug near a heater in the lounge room and started to do CPR compressions on him and tried to keep him warm.
I tried to give him air a couple of times but it would not work because we could not get his head back far enough.
We then gave him a couple of compressions before the paramedics came.
Matt couldn't calm down enough to do it so I did it because I could kind of remember how to do it.
While we were doing this, the female paramedic came inside and looked at Zayden and got the male paramedic to run to the van. Matt stayed with Zayden and the police who arrived at about the same time. I went outside for a couple of seconds and was screaming. I then went back inside and the ambulance officers cut open his t-shirt and started to do compressions.
Another ambulance officer told me that he was going to take Zayden to the hospital so I went to the hospital sitting in the front seat. We got to the hospital and Zayden was taken straight into ICU and there were about twenty people in the room with him. They would not let me near the room and made me sit down near the corner. The female paramedic left the room and walked past me and she was crying. I started screaming and made a run for Zayden and the nurse grabbed me and took me into the cubical.
After a while a pediatrician who was in with him came over and spoke to me. He said that Zayden didn't have a heart beat and was not responding to anything.
"After this they pronounced my baby dead. I was put in a family room and a a nurse brought me over to sit with Zayden while the hospital tried to get hold of someone to help me"
The police then came and spoke to me and I told them I wanted to go with the police then to help them as much as I could so they could get the person who hurt my baby. I sat with them for a while and then went back to Zayden and held him for a while before the hospital staff took him downstairs.
During the night I did not wake up at all. I am usually a crappy sleeper but was exhausted from the night before and just slept straight through. I didn't hear anybody in the house. I didn't hear the back glass door being open and it is normally a very noisy door. I also didn't hear the dog making any noise and she would normally make noise. I didn't hear or feel Matt get out of bed, he would normally roll to get out of bed and I would know most of the time when he would get out of bed. Matt was asleep when I went to sleep and had been dozing off when he got back from Adelaide.
- This is an edited extract of a witness statement tendered to Bendigo Magistrates Court.
