6-Month-Old Died After Receiving 6 Routine Vaccines at Wellness Visit

The baby was found dead less than 14 hours after receiving the injections.

May 21, 2025

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Blessings Myrical Jean Simmons received six routine vaccines at roughly 3 p.m., on Jan. 13, at a six-month wellness visit. The next morning, her parents found the baby dead in her bassinet. The autopsy listed Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, as the infant’s cause of death.'

Less than 14 hours after 6-month-old Blessings Myrical Jean Simmons was given six vaccines during a six-month wellness visit, she died. The baby received the vaccines at roughly 3 p.m. on Jan. 13 at a clinic in Louisiana, according to the baby’s mother, Brishe McKinley.

At roughly 8:30 a.m. the next morning, the parents found Blessings dead in her bassinet. “We miss her so much,” McKinley told The Defender.

When asked what she most wanted to tell the public, McKinley said, “Don’t let you, your loved one, or your children become a statistic of Pharma.”

McKinley and her partner, Elijah Simmons, shared the story of their daughter Blessings’ death in an interview with CHD.TV Program Director Polly Tommey.

McKinley told Tommey, “We just want justice for her, and we want to bring awareness.”

Blessings was in ‘perfect health’ when she went in for routine visit

The day Blessings went to the pediatrician’s office for her six-month visit, she was in “perfect health,” McKinley said. It was five days before she turned 6 months old.

“She was cooing, babbling. She was her normal self,” McKinley said.

According to Blessings’ vaccination record, shared with CHD.TV, she was given six vaccines recommended for 6-month-olds on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) immunization schedule.

They included a second dose of DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), inactivated poliovirus, Hib (short for Haemophilus influenzae type b), rotavirus and pneumococcal, and a third dose of hepatitis B or Hep B.

She received two shots in each leg. The other two vaccines were given orally, McKinley said. “I thought that we were doing what we needed to do to keep her healthy and safe.”

After receiving the vaccines, Blessings was “cranky” and “crying more than what she normally would,” McKinley said. “We assumed that it was because she was in pain from the injection sites.”

Her parents gave her Tylenol, as the pediatrician had recommended. “We just tried to soothe her,” McKinley said. “Her dad rocked her to sleep.”

Roughly an hour later, the parents went to bed.

“When we woke up that next morning, that’s when we found her, lifeless,” McKinley said. “When we touched her body, it was cold.”

‘Words can’t even describe’ the grief

Blessings was born roughly four weeks early on July 8, 2024, but was generally a healthy baby, McKinley said. “She was thriving, she was healthy.”

She was given a dose of the Hep B vaccine at birth. Due to being born prematurely, she stayed briefly in the neonatal intensive care unit but was soon released.

On Sept. 23, 2024, she received a second dose of Hep B and her first dose of the DTaP, polio, Hib, rotavirus, pneumococcal and RSV vaccines.

McKinley told The Defender they named her Blessings “because she was going to be a ‘divine gift’ and the light we needed after going through recent trials and tribulations.”

Simmons told Tommey that losing Blessings has “been very hard, shocking.” He paused. “It’s …” His voice trailed off.

“Words can’t even describe,” McKinley said.

Simmons and McKinley have a 4-year-old son who now misses his baby sister. The boy was diagnosed with autism at age 2.

McKinley told Tommey she’s unsure what caused his autism, but suspects the vaccines he received may have played a role. “I’m about 90% sure that that was the case.”

Blessings loved spending time with her brother and parents. “She was always smiling,” McKinley said, “Every time her dad came in the room, she lit up. … She was perfect.”

Death certificate listed SIDS as cause of death

As soon as McKinley and Simmons found Blessings dead, they called 911. “I was pretty much hysterical,” McKinley recalled. The paramedics asked her if the baby had a pulse.

McKinley, who has a degree in criminal justice and studied the stages of death, knew that it was too late for anything to be done.

The police came and questioned the parents.

“Did you guys check on her through the night, and did she wake up during the night?” they asked, according to McKinley.

McKinley said Blessings was at the point where she would sleep through the night and would usually wake up her parents in the morning. “She would pop her head up, move her neck around and, you know, try to get our attention.”

“That’s another reason why we knew that something was wrong — because she didn’t respond and wake up the way she normally does,” McKinley added.

The coroner came and had the parents reenact how they found Blessings, which they did. “Then everyone just pulled off and left. And we were left to basically, you know, deal with it on our own,” McKinley said. “The lead investigator [on the case] never reached out.”

The investigators ordered an autopsy and tests for narcotics, alcohol and other drugs. “I’m guessing that once they realized she didn’t have any of that in her system, they didn’t feel the need to pursue a criminal case,” McKinley said.

When The Defender asked for more details about the autopsy, McKinley said samples were taken from all the baby’s organs. “There were definitely signs that she had an adverse reaction, but they didn’t follow up on them.”

Tommey asked, “What was on the death certificate?”

“The cause of death is listed as SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,” McKinley said.

“At any point, did anyone talk to you about the fact that she just had vaccines?” Tommey asked.

“No,” McKinley said.

McKinley told The Defender that when she tried telling the police and the coroner of Blessings’ recent vaccinations, they dismissed the vaccines as a possible cause of death. They just continued to ask her other questions, as if the vaccines “couldn’t be a contributing factor,” she said.

In a 2023 interview with Steve Kirsch, a former police detective claimed that about 50% of the sudden infant death cases she investigated showed the child had received a vaccination in the previous 48 hours. But coroners never mentioned vaccines on the death certificates, and doctors have been trained to gaslight parents, she said.

McKinley also told The Defender that she heard of another baby in her city who had passed away in the same circumstances around the time of Blessings’ death. “The mom’s cousin, who was a mutual friend, reached out to me via Facebook to tell me about it.”

Clinic admits vaccines likely caused infant’s death

The clinic later reached out to Blessings’ parents and told them the baby’s death had been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

VAERS is co-managed by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

The clinic staff asked McKinley to come in to talk about the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).

Created by the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which protects vaccine makers from liability for injuries related to vaccines on the CDC’s childhood schedule, VICP is meant to provide an alternative means of compensating people who suffer “accidental injury or death” from taking those vaccines.

Blessings’ parents were considering legal representation at the time and declined to meet with clinic staff to discuss VICP.

Clinic staff called again and gave them information about VICP over the phone, “but I had done my research and already knew about it,” McKinley said.

Filing a claim with VICP does not ensure compensation for vaccine injury or death. For instance, the VICP in fiscal year 2025 received 763 petitions and issued only 598 compensation awards.

McKinley said they initially found a lawyer who agreed to represent them in pressing charges for Blessings’ death, but he changed his mind.

“He told me he was going to subpoena the samples from her autopsy, but instead, he had a medical examiner look over her autopsy,” McKinley said. “The medical examiner basically told him there was nothing more to pursue because the samples that were left over weren’t going to be enough for them to figure out exactly what happened.”

Watch the CHD.TV interview with Blessings’ parents:

Click here for the full interview.

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