Mom Says About Her Skeleton Baby: “I Just Fed Him…”
On October 11, 2020, at about 5:26 a.m., during the height of the pandemic in many areas, 29-year-old Chantavia Hayden showed up at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan with her seven-week-old son wrapped in a blanket. His name was Amir Griffin. The little boy was not breathing, his skin was cold and blue, and he appeared to be suffering from something that the hospital staff couldn’t cure him from: rigor mortis. Little Amir had been dead for a few hours before he was even brought to the hospital.
Chantavia Hayden was a mother of four from Warren, just a 19-mile drive north of Detroit. She was a graduate of nearby Highland Park High School and, for a time, worked as a line worker at the Dearborn Sausage Factory. By all accounts, Amir’s father didn’t appear to be present in either Chantavia’s or her son’s life. Of her children other than Amir, she had a one-year-old daughter and two sons, ages six and seven. As such, Chantavia received assistance from the state of Michigan, which will become important as our story progresses. By now, she was no longer working for the Sausage Factory and relied on benefits.
In the four months preceding Amir’s birth and subsequent death, she received fifteen thousand dollars in unemployment compensation, food stamps, and cash assistance. She had also received 16 cans of formula from the WIC program. For those of you who are outside of the United States, WIC is a program put on by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that aims to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age five who are at risk by providing nutritious foods, information on healthy eating, and referrals to healthcare.
But why is this important? Well, Amir was very malnourished. According to Dr. Jennifer Noble, who is an emergency room physician at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, “the bones are very prominent, the skin is draping around the bones because there is no fat left; the fat has been used.” Despite Amir’s appearance and the fact that he was clearly cold and blue, she and another doctor still conducted life-saving efforts on a whim that they could possibly help this poor baby boy. But sadly, he had been gone for far too long. As such, Amir was pronounced dead 13 minutes after arrival.
According to Dr. Noble, she spoke with Chantavia briefly before life-saving efforts began and again after Amir was pronounced dead. Dr. Noble characterized Chantavia by saying she was very distraught, wasn’t able to answer questions clearly, and was unable to provide a coherent explanation of what happened. However, what Chantavia did tell Dr. Noble did not correlate with a baby who had been dead for at least two to three hours. She told her she had attempted to give him food a couple of hours before taking him to the hospital in her own vehicle. It should be noted that Chantavia never called an ambulance.
Dr. Noble stated that the mother shared with her that Amir had been quiet all day and had whined around 3:45 a.m. At that time, she changed his diaper and attempted to feed him. One hour prior to coming to the hospital, she noticed he was not moving and his skin had changed color. However, she maintained that he was not dead, that he was breathing weirdly, and he would open his eyes. According to Dr. Noble, Amir was cold; his temperature was 91.2 degrees, which is well below the average range of an infant’s temperature of about 96.8 up to 102.2. She went on to state that this was only the second time in her entire career she had ever seen a child arrive at the hospital in such a malnourished condition. However, she did not know the cause of the malnutrition and thought it could be due to a medical issue.
We’ll get into the rest of the story in just one minute. Please stay with us for the following ad; it not only supports the show, but it helps us support local charities in our area.
This week’s episode has been brought to you by Morgan & Morgan, America’s largest injury law firm, with over 800 attorneys operating in 49 states. Are you injured and don’t know where to start? Whether you made an unfortunate mistake or if it’s not your fault at all, Morgan & Morgan has your back. Submitting a claim for an injury doesn’t have to be confusing. There’s no need for you to visit law offices and sit through timely consultations. In eight clicks or less, you can submit a claim to Morgan & Morgan without ever having to leave the couch. Morgan & Morgan has modernized the injury law process, making it so easy to submit a claim. You can submit your case details, sign contracts, and upload documents and medical records all from your cell phone. Best of all, you only pay if they win. If you don’t win your case, you pay nothing. All calls, meetings, texts, time, and effort put into your case are completely free of charge. If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan for more information. Go to forthepeople.com/themiserymachine or dial pound law, that’s #529 from your cell phone. Thanks, and back to the episode.
According to ER nurse Katie Iles, she was tasked with taking Amir to the morgue. She arrived in Amir’s room and found Chantavia holding him in a blanket, seated in a chair. The mother was visibly upset. Amir was placed on a bed so that she could toe-tag him. Upon viewing Amir’s frail frame, the nurse was shocked. She said, “It took my breath away a little bit. The baby was emaciated, sunken cheeks. You could see all of his ribs, his eye sockets were sunken in; it was horrible.”
According to Deputy Wayne County Medical Examiner Dr. Leigh Hlavaty, the cause of death for seven-week-old Amir was the most graphic demonstration of starvation she had ever seen in her career. And sadly, I believe her. She shared that Amir’s case is among those that stand out among her 8,000 autopsies spanning over 20 years in the field. She stated, “Child abuse cases are incredibly difficult for everybody. These cases stay with you. This is the most graphic demonstration of starvation I have ever seen. I knew as soon as I saw Amir’s body it was a starvation case.”
She said the body was essentially skin and bone, there was no fat, and there was very little muscle left on his extremities. According to Dr. Hlavaty, his body had first used fat and then consumed his muscles in an attempt to stay alive. When she performed an autopsy on his body, he had an empty stomach and bladder, and he had no stools in his intestines. She stated, “It had been at least a week since he had seen a meal. If there was some meal given intermittently to him, there would have been some stool. There was inadequate nutrition for several weeks.” She said medical intervention at the time or anytime a few hours before his death could have saved his life.
Tests showed no medical condition or disease was present to potentially cause Amir not to properly absorb nutrients. According to Dr. Hlavaty, there was nothing else abnormal about Amir; it appeared that he had no medical reason to starve to death. Amir’s birth records indicated that he was a normal baby, though he was small and had a cocktail of drugs in his system. Apparently, this wasn’t enough, and they thought the drugs wouldn’t have permanently affected him, so he was released from Ascension St. John Hospital after four days. He weighed five and a half pounds at birth, which is towards the low end of the range for a newborn baby. At his death, he weighed 4.7 pounds. By seven weeks old, Amir should have gained about two to four pounds, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Due to Amir’s state and suspicious death, officers from the Warren Police Department began their investigation. Chantavia had been staying with her sister at Warren Manor Apartments off Dequindre Road, north of Eight Mile Road. To give her sister a break, she and her children went to the Red Roof Inn at Dequindre and 11 Mile Roads in Warren for the weekend of October 10th through the 11th. According to evidence technician Warlocker, who was on the scene at the hotel, investigators found four empty baby bottles, one empty and one full can of powdered infant formula, and two diapers in the room. He said that he could not determine whether the diapers were for Amir or Chantavia’s one-year-old daughter. To me, that’s weird. You can definitely tell the difference between a newborn diaper and diapers meant for toddlers, even if you don’t have kids.
During her police interview, Chantavia repeatedly said that she fed her baby. After the questioning was over, she was alone in the interview room, and she said, “I don’t know what the f*** to do. I hurt my baby.” Apparently, Chantavia didn’t have enough common sense to know that those rooms are fitted with both audio and video recording devices.
Due to the medical examiner’s findings as well as evidence recovered at the Red Roof Inn, Chantavia Hayden was arrested and charged with second-degree homicide and second-degree child abuse in connection with her son’s death. She was held at the county jail in lieu of a one-million-dollar bond.
During a pre-trial hearing, Chantavia appeared remotely via Zoom in front of Judge James Biernat Jr. in Macomb County Circuit Court. She told Judge Biernat she wanted to fire her court-appointed attorney, Randy Rodnick. Rodnick, who appeared in person for court, noted he obtained a plea offer from Macomb prosecutors that would have resulted in a 10-year sentence for Chantavia. This is well below the expected sentencing guideline range for charges such as hers.
Chantavia replied that she did not want to plead guilty as she was innocent. She said, “If you know plea, so y’all can stop coming at me with a plea deal because I’m not accepting it. I’m not pleading guilty to no murder because I did not harm my child, period.” She went on to state that she wanted a different attorney representing her at the trial. After further discussion also involving assistant prosecutor Colleen Worden, Judge Biernat said he was reluctantly agreeing to terminate Attorney Rodnick and have a county public defender take the case.
At trial, assistant prosecutor Molly Zapatel told jurors that Amir went from a normal baby after birth to a malnourished child his entire brief life. “Everything was fine with Amir except he didn’t have food. He starved to death. There is no other cause of death.” Assistant prosecutor Zapatel displayed two photographs of Amir on a big screen: one from the hospital and one from his autopsy, which shows his extremely malnourished condition. She pointed out to the jury that Amir at the hospital was a chunky little baby and then pointed out what happened to him seven weeks later.
Assistant prosecutor Zapatel asserted Chantavia may not have intentionally tried to kill Amir but created a high risk of death or great bodily harm in which death was a likely result—an element of second-degree homicide. She speculated perhaps she was angry at Amir’s father for not being involved with the baby, although one of her three other children was also fathered by him. It should be noted that the other three children were described as very well-fed.
According to the assistant prosecutor, Chantavia never took Amir to a doctor’s visit and downplayed his condition to paramedics after she called 911 to her residence 10 days before Amir’s death due to him choking up baby formula. She went on to accuse the mother of lying to police when she said after the baby’s death that she fed him 12 hours before and had been feeding him three to four bottles of formula per day, although that amount is still about half of what a baby needs to survive. Additionally, she stated that Chantavia lied to receive more government assistance than she was entitled to, such as state unemployment benefits and federal benefits under WIC. The prosecutor said this demonstrated the mother’s lack of credibility.
Assistant prosecutor Zapatel speculated that Chantavia may have spent some money on drugs as there was evidence she was a drug user and that Amir was born with drugs in his system. During his closing argument, Chantavia’s new attorney, Andrew Hubs, said that his client did not receive more benefits than she deserved and that she was a struggling mother. After Amir’s death, she was struggling with the loss of her child. He asked jurors to find her not guilty because the prosecution had not proven its case and so that she could move on with her life in the grieving process. Excuse me, sir?
Thankfully, Judge James Biernat Jr., who presided over the more than one-week trial, rejected Attorney Hubs’s request to allow the jury to consider manslaughter as a potential verdict. However, not taking the plea deal proved to be foolish on Chantavia’s part, as she was later found guilty and convicted on all charges on Thursday, September 22nd, 2022. The jury only deliberated for two hours.
According to Assistant Macomb Prosecutor Colleen Worden, “We are happy that the jury listened intently to all of the evidence and rendered a verdict that delivered justice for baby Amir.” On November 23, 2022, Chantavia Hayden was sentenced to 27 and a half to 50 years in prison. I guess she should have taken that deal. She’s currently serving her time at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and her earliest release date is April 22nd, 2048.
Amir’s story, like many of the stories of children that we cover, has left us with a lot of questions. If the little boy was born with a cocktail of drugs in his system, why didn’t DHS get involved? Furthermore, why was Chantavia allowed to leave the hospital with him? In addition, 911 was dispatched to her home on October 1st, 10 days prior to Amir’s death, due to him throwing up the formula. This would have been clear evidence that there was something wrong with this little baby; he would have looked very sickly. Why didn’t the emergency personnel take action?
Although we have a lot of love for Detroit and its residents, their DHS system needs a lot of improvement when it comes to helping children like Amir and many other children whose cases we’ve discussed over the years. Something has got to be done to change that.
