PA - Leon Katz, infant, murdered, and twin, injured by babysitter, Pittsburgh- June 24, 2024

[dulcinea]

Do you believe being triggered by loud and unpleasant sounds prevents an adult from leaving the area without committing violence? Let's say she was very triggered by one or both babies crying. Then what?

Not that she was prevented, but that her reaction was immediate and without thinking.

 

[Mack the Knife]

Possible, but Leon had a severe skull fracture. The second article says he had multiple skull fractures. Shaken baby could cause the brain bleed, but I think fractures would indicate impact with a surface.

Woman accused of killing infant, assaulting his twin brother in Shadyside

According to investigators, one of the twins, 6-week-old Leon Katz, died of blunt-force trauma to the head.

www.wtae.com

California Ph.D. student accused of killing infant, abusing twin brother

Nicole Virzi, a doctoral candidate at SDSU and UCSD, was babysitting 6-week-old Leon Katz when he suffered multiple skull fractures, authorities say

www.mercurynews.com

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Shaken Baby Syndrome (also known as Shaken Impact Syndrome) is a serious form of abuse inflicted upon a child. It usually occurs when a parent or other

www.aans.org

I didn’t mean to indicate specifically that there was a misdiagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome—I’m not sure if it was diagnosed here at all—just that there are known issues with interpreting physical trauma in infants, and that sometimes people are accused and convicted of murder but it is later determined that no crime took place.

I think since the arrest and whatnot have happened so fast, there hasn’t been much that has gotten out to the public, so I draw no conclusions to what the truth is. I don’t even have a guess.

 

[steeltowngirl]

There’s a pretty famous case of a child who died from apparent antifreeze poisoning. He had been vomiting and had trouble breathing, and doctors found high levels of ethylene glycol in his blood. A couple of years later, his brother started having the same symptoms. Two brothers, sick in the same way, it would seem likely that they were both poisoned with antifreeze.

But, at the time the younger brother was showing symptoms, his mother was in prison for the murder of the older brother. It was determined that Patricia Stallings’s sons weren’t sick because they were abused in the same way, they were sick because they had the same disease.

Until more facts come out, I’m open to the idea that there could be some unknown other factor that the twins have in common, or even that their injuries were unrelated.

The movie “Take Care of Maya” was about a woman falsely accused of child abuse. It was sad and disturbing. Personally, I have faith in the neurosurgeons at Children’s Hospital ability to accurately identify abusive pediatric head trauma. But prosecutors will need to prove it with strong evidence. I still predict a plea or bench trial.

jmo

 

[Arkay]

There’s a pretty famous case of a child who died from apparent antifreeze poisoning. He had been vomiting and had trouble breathing, and doctors found high levels of ethylene glycol in his blood. A couple of years later, his brother started having the same symptoms. Two brothers, sick in the same way, it would seem likely that they were both poisoned with antifreeze.

But, at the time the younger brother was showing symptoms, his mother was in prison for the murder of the older brother. It was determined that Patricia Stallings’s sons weren’t sick because they were abused in the same way, they were sick because they had the same disease.

Until more facts come out, I’m open to the idea that there could be some unknown other factor that the twins have in common, or even that their injuries were unrelated.

I understand your point completely, but as you cited, these two brothers had the SAME symptoms, and it emerged that they had the SAME disease.

In the Katz case, from what we know at this time, these twins had DIFFERENT injuries. One had injuries to his genital region and one had a fractured skull and died.

IMO this speaks of separate assaults on each twin.

 

[TristanP]

There’s a pretty famous case of a child who died from apparent antifreeze poisoning. He had been vomiting and had trouble breathing, and doctors found high levels of ethylene glycol in his blood. A couple of years later, his brother started having the same symptoms. Two brothers, sick in the same way, it would seem likely that they were both poisoned with antifreeze.

But, at the time the younger brother was showing symptoms, his mother was in prison for the murder of the older brother. It was determined that Patricia Stallings’s sons weren’t sick because they were abused in the same way, they were sick because they had the same disease.

Until more facts come out, I’m open to the idea that there could be some unknown other factor that the twins have in common, or even that their injuries were unrelated.

You may have missed one fact already known, which is that NV said the deceased twin “fell out” of his bouncer seat and that’s what caused his injuries.

It’s safe to assume that the baby with injured genitals had no injury when the parents left, because as soon as they knew they took him to the hospital. (I’m thrown by this, because I would not have left the other baby with her when I just came home to discover my baby’s genitals were injured.)

This is clearly not a statistically unlikely, bizarre disease.

 

[Mack the Knife]

You may have missed one fact already known, which is that NV said the deceased twin “fell out” of his bouncer seat and that’s what caused his injuries.

It’s safe to assume that the baby with injured genitals had no injury when the parents left, because as soon as they knew they took him to the hospital. (I’m thrown by this, because I would not have left the other baby with her when I just came home to discover my baby’s genitals were injured.)

This is clearly not a statistically unlikely, bizarre disease.

I’ve seen that, but didn’t include it in my list of facts because I take it as more of a narrative than something that everyone agrees happened.

I’m not sure what you mean about there being no injury when the parents left because they took him to the hospital. Left from where? I don’t think we know enough about the injury or the circumstances to know that only NV could have caused it and that the injury must have been caused very recently.

IMO, with the information available to the public, it remains possible that AK had an injury prior to NV pointing it out and the parents taking him to the hospital, and that the injury was not caused by NV.