Cheshire parents seek answers after small baby dies after being found on living room floor

A Cheshire couple are searching for answers after the sudden and tragic death of their six-week-old baby girl. On September 5 last year, Jacob and Megan Oakley of Runcorn were devastated after the tragedy.

Cassidy’s parents took turns caring for their newborn daughter overnight after Jake recovered from spinal surgery.

Jacob, also known as Jake, explained that Cassidy was sleeping on a pillow on a small stool and surrounded by pillows and blankets when he fell asleep at 11 p.m. But when he woke up just 30 minutes later, by what he describes as a “superior force”, his baby was dead, Liverpool Echo reports.

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He told the Echo: “I can only describe it as a higher force because there was no crying or noise, she just wasn’t there. I wondered if Meg had taken her upstairs, but then I ‘I saw the pink jumpsuit and it had fallen off. 999 while I was performing CPR.

Jake said he believed Cassidy had suffered a heart attack, which knocked her off the stool to the floor, and she was taken to Warrington Hospital where her parents said she was stabilized, before to be transferred to Alder Hey Hospital. Jake said an initial post-mortem examination showed she had suffered a second heart attack, resulting in brain damage.

He added: “We weren’t allowed to be with her as there was a police investigation but we waited in the waiting room for five hours before we were told she was stable enough to be transferred to Alder Hey, where she died.”

Jake said he was not allowed to see the couple’s other daughter, two-year-old Esme, during the inquest, which was “one of the worst feelings on the planet”. He said: “We weren’t sure what had gone through our minds correctly. When at Alder Hey we were told she had brain damage and it was decided to turn off her life support, we were told said she would not have that quality of life.She died at 2:40 p.m. on September 9.

Adding to the couple’s grief, Jake still hasn’t been able to see his other daughter for several days, which he says was “difficult for everyone”. But when the death was referred to the coroner and an inquest opened, Jake said he had received the report written and signed by a consultant from Alder Hey, the notes of which upset him suggesting that ” underlying” was a probable cause of Cassidy’s death.

He told the Echo: “In this report it is stated that he cannot give a definitive cause of death and gave an overly accidental one. He said there was no sign of death. asphyxiation that one might have expected.”

Jake added: “The police took me home and interrogated me with a doll and made me act out what happened so many times and it was filmed. He would have seen that evidence.”

He said: “It wasn’t just a number in a hospital, it was a person. It was our baby. It’s like the nightmare continues.”

The report, presented to the Echo, says the likely possibility of accidental overlay “cannot be ruled out with high certainty”. He adds: “However, given the circumstances in which she was found lifeless, on a balance of probabilities, I believe that Cassidy died from an accidental recovery while in a dangerous sleeping position ( of the footrest).”

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital told the Echo it could not comment on individual cases.

No date has yet been set for an inquest.

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