A young Georgia couple thought they already experienced the worst pain imaginable when they lost their first child, Treveon Isaiah Taylor Jr., who died during delivery in 2023.
The delivery of the couple’s son made headlines across the country after it was revealed that the baby was decapitated during delivery.
Then Dr. Jackson Gates, the pathologist Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr. hired to perform an independent autopsy, posted videos of their son’s mangled body on social media without their consent.
Last week, a jury in Fulton County ordered Gates to pay the couple nearly $2.5 million.
Decapitated during childbirth
What should have been one of the happiest days of their lives soon turned into a nightmare for Ross and Taylor at the Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale on June 10, 2023.
According to court documents, after several hours of hard labor, Ross, then 20, was told the baby had become stuck behind her pelvic bone. According to reports, the baby was unable to descend into the vaginal canal because of a condition called shoulder dystocia, which results in a baby’s shoulder getting stuck.
Dr. Tracey St. Julian did not use proper maneuvers to relieve the shoulder dystocia and applied “excessive traction,” Roderick Edmond, the couple’s lawyer who is also a physician, told The New York Times two months after Treveon’s death.
Edmond said the baby’s legs and torso were reportedly delivered via c-section, and the baby’s head was then delivered vaginally.
“It gave me chills to know his head was off his body.”
Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr., father of Treveon Isaiah Taylor Jr.
No one told the couple that the baby had been decapitated, and they were only able to view the baby through a glass window. They never held their baby.
It wasn’t until the parents were making funeral arrangements that they learned the truth about the condition of their child’s body.
“It was shocking,” the grieving 21-year-old father told reporters. “It gave me chills to know his head was off his body.”
A Grisly Instagram post
After learning about the condition of their baby, Ross hired Gates, the founder and president of the Atlanta-based Medical Diagnostic Services, to perform an autopsy.
Two days later, Gates posted a video to his Instagram account of the baby’s “decapitated, severed head,” lawyers for the couple said in their complaint.
After expressing their concerns, Gates deleted the video, but then reportedly posted two more videos from the baby’s autopsy days later.
In a statement last week to the Times, lawyers for the couple said Gates “poured salt into the couple’s already deep wounds when he betrayed them.
“This young couple trusted him with the remains of their precious baby,” the statement continued. “Gates, in turn, repaid this trust by posting horrific images of their child for the world to see. We believe that the jury sent a powerful message that doctors must always consider the feelings of their patients and, in this case, their clients. Always move with empathy. Our goal was to ensure that Gates was held accountable for his unconscionable lack of empathy and invasion of our clients’ privacy.”
The suit was filed in State Court in Fulton County.
In a post on Facebook that has reportedly been deleted, Gates wrote that the outcome of the case was “a complete miscarriage of justice” and that he would file an appeal.
Seeking justice to help others
In addition to the suit against Gates, the couple reportedly also filed a complaint in Clayton County State Court against the obstetrician, St. Julian, her practice, as well as Southern Regional Medical Center and six unnamed nurses.
The suit accuses the parties of gross negligence, fraud, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
St. Julian is accused of applying excessive force to their baby’s neck and head during the vaginal delivery, and that she failed to request additional help or perform an emergency cesarean section in a timely manner.
The complaint also alleges that hospital staff tried to conceal that their son had been decapitated and tried to dissuade them from seeking an autopsy.
At the time the suit was filed, the parents told The New York Times in an emailed statement that they filed the lawsuit to “hold those responsible for our son’s death accountable in the hopes that no other parents have to experience such a profound loss.”
