Doctor’s Visit Saves 5mo From the Most Terrifying Mom Ever
“How a five-month-old infant gets several rib fractures.”
“Maybe… maybe I did. Maybe I did do it. He screamed. He screamed at me and then I said, ‘Stop.’ And I bumped him in my head. It wasn’t too much. It was just… It could get more. I remember my hands firmly on him, but I did not squeeze.”
“You just told me 10 minutes ago you did.”
On March 13th, 2025, officers were called to a hospital after doctors noticed something unusual during a routine check on a young family member.
“Bridget, this is Gina.”
“Hi, Gina. This is Officer Hubrick with the Port Orchard Police Department. I’m calling for social worker Maxi.”
“Social work, this is Maxi.”
“Hi, Maxi. This is Officer Hubs with the Port Orchard Police Department.”
“Hi, how are you?”
“Good. So, what do you got going on tonight? We’ve got a five-month-old here that has both old and it looks like possibly new rib fractures, um, some facial and forehead head bruising.”
“Okay.”
“Uh, when I asked, uh, parents if they knew how that could have happened, they have absolutely no idea. There’s no other caregivers. Baby doesn’t go to daycare with parents all the time.”
“Okay. So with… with parents all the time. Is the child crawling or anything of that nature?”
“No.”
“Okay. They didn’t know of the ribs until we did the scan, but the head bruising they said was from a toy that the baby plays with aggressively.”
“Okay. So, you said there was old and new fractures.”
“The bone survey says that bilateral healing rib fractures, um, and left side rib fractures.”
“What’s the demeanor of the parents right now? I mean, do they… do they seem concerned? Are they kind of like, eh?”
“They seem concerned. There is a note on file that is blocked from them. One of the nurses overheard mom telling dad like, ‘She’s done.’ And dad replied with, ‘I’m so sorry it all happened so fast.’ But there’s no context to any of that. Um, but this was after they were notified of the ribs.”
“Okay. So, due to manpower issues, what we’re going to do is I’m going to notify my supervisor. My supervisor is getting… going to get in contact with one of our detectives. So, somebody will be calling you back within the next little while. It may be a detective. It may be me calling you back to let you know what’s going on.”
“Hi.”
“Hi. So, uh, we got a hold of our detectives. So, they are… one of them is on their way in and should hopefully be contacting you well whenever they get into the office. Hopefully within the next half hour.”
“My body cam right here. Um, as a parent, I’m a parent. Um, this is probably a very emotional time for you. I want to take a second and just step back. You introduce yourself. Tell me a little bit about yourself. I just, uh, want to get to know you. Want to get to know your baby. Want to get to know your family. Can you say your name for me?”
“My name is Taylor Marie Cruz. Um, I came from Phoenix in Arizona about two years ago. I guess almost three now. Um, with my boyfriend. Um, we both worked at the same place, Cracker Barrel. Um, I lived there my whole life up until 2-3 years ago. Did it on a whim.”
“Okay. Awesome. Tell me a little bit about the history. Uh, you can go as far back as the pregnancy. So, you know, it was always my mom’s dream that I would, you know, go to college, then get married, then have a kid. But I just believed in live life the way you should. And my boyfriend and I were very happy and we wanted to share that with another person. So, you know, we were trying but not trying. And, um, we were pregnant, um, about a year prior. Um, we had a miscarriage. Pregnancy was really smooth. I mean, you know, most people are like, ‘It’s horrible. I hated it.’ And I’m like, ‘I didn’t really feel any different about it.'”
“It’s always the second one, they guess, wait about a few years before we think, right?”
“But, um, no, it was easy going. Second trimester was beautiful. Third trimester was, you know, it’s harder, you’re bigger, you can’t move around, you sleep crabby, but Richard took care of everything. He cleaned, he cooked for me, he pulled my hair back when I threw up. He was, it was a really great, easy pregnancy. I had a lot of support from family and I even flew down to Arizona for a second baby shower ’cause my mom lives there. We had him at, um, University of Washington Medical Center.”
“Yeah, we had no… no issues with the pregnancy at all. It was… we had his mom, uh, Richard’s mom come up from Arizona and she was here for about a week and she took care of cleaning and cooking and she brought up groceries and she was very supportive in that way and I was really grateful for that. After about two… I think it was 3 months, that was just too much for me. It was… I was, you know, I was constantly afraid of like rolling over on top of him. Um, so we sleep-trained him and he took to it immediately and for the last month and a half, I’d say probably closer to just a month, he’s been sleeping in his own crib and sleeping 10 hours a night.”
“Any frustrations?”
“Before we… before we started sleep training where he would just wake up every hour during the night and that’s kind of where I was like, we need to transition to sleep training now. We gave him 4 ounces every 2 hours. He eats every… he… he basically has been eating every two hours since he was born. It’s always been a consistent two hours. That’s when he eats. And, um, we up it, you know, every once in a while I’ll like test it. You know, I’ll give him like 3 ounces and if he’s good with that, then we keep trying it.”
“How… how did that appointment go with your PCP?”
“Um, it was stressful. Um, we… he had, um, talked to him about it and then he asked about the bruising on his cheek and, um, a week prior like a little like plastic toy and he whacked himself in the face with it and I was like okay well we can’t have you have that anymore. So we took the toy away and we just didn’t really think anything of it. It was just a little bruise. He didn’t seem… he fussed a little bit after he was hit, but, um, he… he continued to be a happy smiley boy the rest of the day, so he didn’t really think anything of it. You have to… he’s like any child with bruising has to be sent to Mary Bridge. So like okay. Um, he didn’t really specify what for. He just said that any sort of… he said it could be just bleeding or anything like that. I was like okay. So, Richard and I had made the decision to just go to St. Anthony’s, which was closer.”
“Who… who wanted to go to St. Anthony’s?”
“Um, Richard.”
“Um, the doctors notify you why law enforcement and CPS were called?”
“It’s understandable. Yeah.”
“Okay. Why… Why would it be understandable?”
“Um, you know, and… and I would assume that in children cases, it’s… it’s not taken lightly. I didn’t really think it was going to escalate to this point. I didn’t… I mean to… for all I knew he just… he was just a bruise.”
“Mhm.”
“That’s all it looked like to me. That’s all it was. He didn’t seem to have any other issues besides the fact that he just wasn’t up to his weight of what the pediatrician wanted.”
“Doctors tell you, uh, uh, what else there is besides the bruise?”
“Um, they told me about his ribs. I… I wish that I… I knew why. I… I don’t know. And it’s… it’s heartbreaking to hear that your son has, especially your five-month-old, has rib fractures. I… I mean holding him, it didn’t feel like there was anything. I never noticed anything. There was one moment that I… I can recall where he was sleeping on Richard and Richard passed out on the bed and he had fallen.”
“He was sleeping on Richard. Where at?”
“On the bed in our bedroom.”
“Okay. What kind of floors do you guys have?”
“Um, carpeted.”
“Okay. Uh, how did he land?”
“Um, Richard said he landed face down. I was asleep next to him and I didn’t hear him until he had already like picked him up. So, I was half awake.”
“I’m not a medical professional. This was explained to me by medical professionals, um, and they can explain the same thing to you is that we have our sternum right here in our chest and our ribs come around and they wrap around all the way in the back. Okay? Like this. All right? And so you have your sternum here and your ribs come around like this. Okay. If I was to give you CPR, right? Compressions straight up and down. Um, and it was intense, there’s possibilities of anterior ribs, rib fractures happening. The reason that I’m here is that posterior rib fractures in infants are specifically consistent with a squeezing motion. Because if someone was having CPR or someone jumped on your chest, something like that, your ribs break in the front. It would have to take pressure from the back to break those ribs. That being said, something… someone… a high impact event had to have caused this. And my job is to figure out how this happened. Is it an accident? Falling off the bed. Kids fall. Accidents happen. I have kids. I have twins. There are times where I… I get frustrated, you know, with the twins when they’re infants and… and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, just stop crying.’ You know, it’s… it’s one of those things with the lack of sleep that… that accidents are something someone may not have wanted to happen, uh, did something that happened. Could be an accident, could be something like that. Going forward, um, all… all I ask is honesty. Um, I’m not going to play games with you. I… I don’t play hide the ball. I don’t… I don’t play the, uh, uh… I… I don’t… I don’t keep secrets or anything like that. Has Richard told you anything that could… that could have caused these injuries?”
“We… we talked about it back and forth about situations.”
“Um, have you guys been in any like severe car accidents or anything?”
“No, we just have the one vehicle and I haven’t been in… the only accident I’ve been in that was like four years ago and a deer come in front of my car, but that’s not relevant.”
“Okay. ‘Cause that… that’s the kind of force that I’m looking for. Laying down on a pillow and falling on the carpet isn’t… it’s not consistent with posterior rib fractures. I… I’m trying to find out what happened. So, and… and that’s not me accusing anybody. I… all I… all I do as far… as far as my job is I’m an information gatherer. Something… something happened. I put together the pieces of how it happened and why it happened. Accidents happen. Uh, emotions happen. I think you… you told me that you saw him hit himself in the head with the Elmo toy. Plastic Elmo.”
“He likes to and he slung it up and it hit him in the face.”
“When was that?”
“Like a week ago. I have like… I took a picture of it on like… I think May 5th is when I noticed that there was bruising.”
“Okay.”
“So I think it was like the next day or something like that. It would popped up.”
“Yeah. Being transparent with you, I find… you saw it that one time then you took the away. We have here, we have here and we have here. So that’s three separate occurrences.”
“I just noticed the one… I mean, I noticed the little one right here. I just… I don’t know how he got that. I mean, he might have… he does like to stand in the car seat, so he could have like hit his head on that and the little like carrier thing. He does stand up and I have noticed him bonk his head a time or two, but I didn’t like… I wouldn’t notice.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. You would think that something a little more impactful would cause a bruise. My main goal is to figure out how… how a five-month-old infant gets several rib fractures. One of the nurses overheard you guys talking and he was saying something about it happened so fast.”
“Yeah, that was the… him falling was he… he… him falling so fast that he didn’t realize it was… he was asleep and then all of a sudden he was on the floor and then it was just…”
“I’m going to talk to Richard after you and, uh, I… I hope that somebody today gives me a reason as to why this happened. This… This is going to be hard to hear so brace yourself. This is… this is, uh, standard as far as investigation goes. These injuries are consistent with child abuse. That being said, I… I… I have to have the kid in protective custody with CPS and that… that isn’t a like… that’s… that… that’s just standard as far as this goes. I don’t… I don’t have… I don’t have a legitimate reason as to why this could have happened. We’re waiting for CPS to come in for their day shift, which they said they’d be on at eight. And then throughout this investigation, there’s a baby who has rib fractures. I need to make sure this baby isn’t getting rib fractures and isn’t getting hurt. I know that’s hard to hear. That being said, I’m… I’m positive there’s going to be more tests. There’s going to be more X-rays. There’s going to be more all sorts of stuff. And CPS will, uh… will communicate with you. I’m not going to be playing any games with you and neither is CPS. That’s not… that’s not how we roll. We just try to paint a picture of how things happened.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him. It’s not my… I don’t want to hurt him. It’s not… I just don’t see why any reason why I would hurt him. I understand frustration. I understand it can get frustrating. It’s… But it just… it didn’t ever seem like it was just that bad.”
“Yeah. And this isn’t… this isn’t accusatory. This is just consistencies with these injuries. I… I picked him up by his ribs and I understand like looking at him like why did you…”
“Maybe… maybe I did… maybe I did do it. I just… I don’t know if I did because I just… I don’t remember breaking… I don’t remember him being increasingly aggressive or angry or sound like he’s in pain.”
“Any… any time in the past few weeks where like he had like a really bad night like he’s crying profusely like out of nowhere.”
“He’s been… he’s been sleeping really good the last 3 weeks. I… I don’t… I don’t ever find Richard getting silent.”
“I want you to get the time to, uh, to think about this and come to reality with this. Get some sleep, get some good water in you, get some good food in you, and, uh, I… I hope that we can all work as a team to figure out why someone so innocent was subjected to this.”
“I really do want to say it’s me. I might have or I have. I just thought that it was just so much frustrating. It was just I just wanted him to sleep. I just wanted him to get what he needed. And he just kept screaming at me. And I… I could see myself picking him up and… and I don’t want to think that I’m capable of that because I’m not. But the frustration’s hard. I never think myself capable of something like that. I just love that kid too damn much.”
“Is there a possibility, um, that he was squeezed harder than you thought out of frustration?”
“…stupid. Watch all these cautions and I bash all these parents and…”
“Um, I… I feel like you want to talk to me. I feel like you want to be honest with me. I do.”
“I… I don’t… I respect cops so much. I’ve done nothing wrong in my life and I just… It’s ridiculous. I always tell her it’s ridiculous that people lie to cops. I don’t… I don’t get why people do that. It just… It just comes back 10 times worse.”
“Just… to get further into this where we’re going. I’m… I’m not detaining you. I’m not arresting you or anything, but I do want to read your rights. You’re okay with that? Okay. Having these rights in mind, would you talk to me now?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you did it?”
“Right around the time that he got sick. So, and I was probably in January. Just wouldn’t stop crying and picked him up and I said, ‘Can you please stop crying?’ And I had him by his sides and I think I applied pressure, put him down immediately and walked away and gave myself 10 minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever done it more than once.”
“Say that was at the end of January. That’s the only time he can remember doing that. Any other time it’s… it’s been really down. Maybe he’s crying too much and I… I feel like I… I don’t know what to do. I just put him down.”
“You react out of frustration.”
“Mhm.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah.”
“How often would you say you do that?”
“Once or twice.”
“Does it feel like uncontrollable?”
“I think I… I can feel like I can reach that point of just like I don’t know what to do. I don’t… I never want to hurt him. I don’t… I don’t want to hurt him. It’s not…”
“What about the bobbing on the head though?”
“I did it once because he was… he screamed. He screamed at me and then I said, ‘Stop.’ And I bopped him. It was just a tap.”
“When you say that was he was like 2 months old… that he had been crying for 30 minutes straight and just wailed.”
“I… I want to… I want to remind you that you’re human. I’m human. We all make mistakes. We do it. It is natural for us to do things out of emotion and then a day later you think to yourself, ‘What the… who the hell was that?’ I don’t have a baby doll or anything like that. Can you demonstrate your actions when you squeeze him? Like picture… paint a picture for me was the whole scenario was… I was cradling him. I was… we did a lot of bouncing and, um, ’cause he likes to bounce and I kind of calmed him a little bit. So I did that and then he just wouldn’t stop. So I’m like okay. And then I was like stop screaming. I’m like, ‘Why are you screaming?’ And… and I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ Like, ‘You can’t squeeze your kid like that.’ And so I put him down. I was… It was that. So…”
“So you told yourself you can’t squeeze your kid like that.”
“You realized that it was too much.”
“In the head it was… it… it in my head it wasn’t too much. It was just… It could get more like you… like you could… you could hurt this kid. He’s small. He’s fragile. He’s, you know, you’re… you’re bigger than him. You’re capable of hurting him. You know, not that I want to hurt him. It just, you know, any human could… hang out in here. Let me be right back. Okay. I brought a baby doll. It does have vomit on it. Um, so, you know, uh, do with it what you may, but I was just hoping you give me… try to think back of… I know you’re probably tired as hell at this point when this happened. Um, try to think back about the room you’re in, the emotions, um, how you’re feeling, and then your reaction to how you felt, uh, when you realize what you did. Um, can you demonstrate that for me?”
“It started off, I think, um, he was laying there. I was trying to get him to sleep in there by himself. He was crying a lot. I’ve been with him all day. He was crying and I picked him up and I said, ‘It’s okay.’ I know. I know it’s a lot. And I just kept crying crying and I’m shushing him and holding him and rocking him back and forth and trying the pacifier and try the bouncing thing and like… I don’t think I sh… I didn’t shake him. ‘Why won’t you stop crying?’ And then I was like no just… I mean I was… crib and I walked away.”
“You think you squeezed him harder than you just squeeze that doll?”
“I really don’t think I did. I… I think I… I remember going like that and I remember applying force but not squeezing. I… I didn’t squeeze. That wasn’t… I… I know for a fact I didn’t squeeze like that. I know I… and I… and I… I remember my hands firmly on him, but I did not squeeze.”
“You just told me 10 minutes ago you did.”
“Like I… not like what I did.”
“What you told me prior was you could have squeezed harder.”
“So I… I… I squeeze like that and I could have gone like that if… if… if I had got to that point, but I… I pulled myself. I… I… I held him and… and I… I could feel my hands on him. I could feel like there was force, but I didn’t squeeze him like I… like you would like an orange. Like I… I didn’t apply that much force.”
“Are there any, uh, dates important to you in late January, early February that you can relate it to?”
“Yeah, my… I had my onboarding for my new job on January 30th.”
“Okay.”
“Because I had… I was supposed to start on Monday. So, he was sick that weekend.”
“So, it was… I think it was right around there. I think it was about right before my onboarding or it was right after like I… I remember he… he was sick that weekend.”
“So, the only care providers for… are you and Richard?”
“Yeah, we had, um, his… my dad and, um, his wife. They babysat a couple times, not overnight, but just a couple times.”
“So, the injuries would have had to occur between either you or Richard. Any thoughts on Richard doing… doing anything? You think there’s a combination? Do you think it’s just the squeezing? Do you think did he get frustrated too?”
“I think the only time I saw him really frustrated, it was when we had started sleep training and he couldn’t stand the thought of him like crying and screaming, but he just left the room and he slept on the couch the rest of the night.”
“Yeah. Those instances where the most common person is capable of doing something like this, right? Like you think, uh, you… you can read studies on how, uh, excuse me, leads to theft, you know, um, speeding leads to vehicle accidents… like there’s a pattern, you know, but this is one of those things where it’s like the most normal person, lack of sleep, uh, lack of energy, constant crying, and it’s just like there’s just that line, you know, and the most common person crosses that line and… and it just… the… the lack of sleep can… can just get to you.”
“I mean, I thought about it, you know, I thought about postpartum. And I thought about you know is it… you know is there something wrong with me? I have asked myself that like you know is it… you know this and then and I call my mom and she said no it’s normal. I mean you know sleep is very important to people.”
“Is… you have no idea.”
“I love sleep right… and then pregnancy that was like probably the only thing that I was just like I wish I wish is easier.”
“Do you think Richard is going to have… you told Richard about the squeezing incident?”
“I think I had said that like I had picked him up. I don’t think I’ve ever explained what happened to him. So, I don’t really think he’ll understand or is…”
“It’s like one of those things that like, uh, you don’t even want to admit happened. Like that’s not me.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, I just you know, he… he’s fine. I’m fine.”
“It’s hard. It’s hard to admit. Would you say it was… it was too far?”
“Yeah, I’d say it was a little too far. I say that that… that wasn’t like me and the fact that I did that just I felt so after even though I… I… I felt like it was just in the moment type thing I just I questioned myself and I said am I even a good parent you know deserve this kind of crap like is… is this normal and I question myself and it’s not I don’t… I don’t want to… I don’t want to… I’ve never been violent I don’t want to be violent it’s just I… And I hate to think that I’m capable of things like that.”
“Today is March 13th. It is 0641. I am with Richard. Uh we are at Mary Bridge Hospital, Tacoma, Washington. You guys talk about each other about frustrations…”
“Like if we’re being if we’re getting frustrated or… Yeah. So we’ve also done pretty well in trying to make sure that if one of us… we’ve never been frustrated at the same time. It’s always been more of if, uh, she’s getting frustrated, I’m like, ‘Here, give me him. Go walk, go for a walk, go do what you need to do, take a shower, anything where we… we’ve been really good on trying to get on top of that ’cause we know that postpartum is a very very hard thing to control.'”
“Anybody else watch the kids?”
“Nobody’s… nobody’s allowed to watch them.”
“Okay.”
“She… her dad will come over and hang out, but I don’t let anybody watch them by themselves anymore.”
“Any… any reason for the bruising on the… Would you tell the doctors? But if anything else you can think of…”
“He has a little Elmo teething toy that we took away now and he’s in the phase of just kicking and moving his hands a lot. So when he had it, he was teething on it and we were sitting there and I watched him hit himself once and that’s… I don’t know if that’s when the bruise happened. I just know that’s when I took the toy away.”
“Okay.”
“Because I noticed I knew that was just… it’s not going to be smart if he’s going to keep smacking himself with it. So we switched him to a lighter like to this toast right here and then just a little rattle. From what I’ve heard, they said that it looks like he has ribs that are… he mostly healed.”
“Okay.”
“That’s what… that’s what I’ve been told as far as like tonight.”
“He’s never… never been hurt. He’s never… no one’s ever touched him. He’s always been just a very happy child.”
“Okay.”
“Anything you can think of that can explain fractures?”
“Not… definitely not. No. Nothing that would be in my mind. Nothing with enough force that would fracture his ribs. No.”
“He has healing posterior ribs. There has to be a pressure from the front and pressure compressing from the back for those to happen. It’s a very specific like if you’re holding a baby and he gets squeezed. Posterior rib fractures are a high concern for child abuse. I’m trying to give you and Taylor every opportunity to recount your memory of an accident of… of anything that possibly could have happened.”
“We’ve only ever had one little mess up and it was nothing that in my mind is even serious ’cause he didn’t even cry from it. I was sleeping with him and he slid off of me. That was about a foot and a half, but he just… I picked him up. He was just fine. I gave him to Taylor and I cried myself for about an hour and a half ’cause I felt really bad. But he didn’t cry during that. He just got… I just picked him back up and gave him right to Taylor. But I… I just don’t feel like that would be enough force and especially a landing on his… on his stomach wouldn’t be enough force.”
“Has Taylor ever told you about an experience where he wailed at her or he… she was really frustrated with something that he did?”
“She’s told me she’s had moments where he’s like pushed her to the limit, but she just puts him down and she just walks away and that’s what… and that’s the way she deals with it.”
“Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to me now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Have you ever hugged him hard out of frustration?”
“Out of frustration? No.”
“Has Taylor ever admitted to you that she squeezed Dean?”
“No.”
“I’m going to use the back of my hands to check your front pockets there. Okay. Anything in your bra? Have you ever been to jail before? So, how it works is I’ll transport you to Kitsap County jail where you’ve been booked in.”
“Uh, how long is she being held for and all that?”
“I was explaining to her just as you walked in. Sorry. It’s the only way I’m interrupting, but she’s going to go down, um, get booked into the jail and then she’ll see a judge probably today.”
“Court’s at 9:00. You’ll probably be able to see one today and then, uh, they are the ultimate ones who figure out what happens to you. Whether you stay on with… with bail or whether you get let out on your own. It all depends from that point.”
“Okay.”
The woman was arrested and charged with assault in the second degree.
