Twin Babies Die a Week After Receiving 3 Vaccines, Police Interrogate Parents
Despite a known family history of allergic reactions to the flu vaccine, the pediatrician assured the parents it was safe to vaccinate the babies anyway.
This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
On May 1, Dallas and Tyson, fraternal 18-month-old twins, were found dead by their mother after receiving the Hepatitis A, flu and DTaP vaccines on April 23. The mother told the pediatrician that the family of the twins’ father had a history of allergic reactions to the flu vaccine, but the pediatrician said it would be OK to give the shot to the babies anyway.
When Andrea Shaw brought her 18-month-old twins in for their wellness visit on April 23, she told the pediatrician she had concerns about the twins receiving the flu shot because her husband’s family had a history of adverse reactions to the vaccine.
The pediatrician told her the babies would be OK and had nurses give the twins the shot. The twins also received the Hepatitis A vaccine and the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccine.
Roughly one week later, on May 1, Andrea found the babies — a girl named Dallas and a boy named Tyson — dead in their bed after apparently passing away in their sleep. Her husband, Nathaniel, the twins’ father, was at work at the time.
Police in Payette, Idaho, where the twins lived with their parents, launched a homicide investigation, which they said was standard procedure when a death from an unknown cause occurs.
On May 7, the local police chief told the media the deaths hadn’t been “definitively” ruled as homicides, and that the autopsy reports would provide more information. The investigation is still ongoing.
A spokesperson for the parents today said the lead detective is still waiting on toxicology reports and has not yet ruled out the parents as suspects. The parents, who are “beyond devastated,” the spokesperson said, have filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
In an interview with Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Polly Tommey, Andrea and Nathaniel walked through the timeline of what happened in the days leading up to their children’s tragic deaths.
Before starting the interview, Tommey, CHD.TV program director, told viewers she was speaking with the twins’ parents only three days after the children passed.
“This is really, really raw,” Tommey said. “This has just happened.”
Twins were ‘normal, perfect, happy little babies’ when they got the shots
Dallas and Tyson were born prematurely, but overall were healthy when they went in for their 18-month wellness visit. They lived with their parents in Payette, Idaho. The parents had no other children.
“They were just normal, perfect, happy little babies,” Andrea said. They had already learned to crawl, walk and say some words, including “mamma” and “dadda.”
“They called their grandpa ‘Bagumpagump,’” the mother recalled, smiling.
The twins had received most of their prior routine vaccinations, including their 1-year-old vaccinations. However, at the doctor’s office for their 18-month visit, Andrea and her mother-in-law explained they were concerned about the twins receiving the flu vaccine.
“Their father’s side of the family,” Andrea said, “they all have bad reactions or are allergic to the flu shot.”
The pediatrician dismissed their concerns, saying the babies “would be OK.” Tommey asked if the pediatrician gave “any other explanation, other than it’s OK?”
“No, she didn’t,” the mother recalled.
After Dallas and Tyson received the flu, Hepatitis A and DTaP vaccines, they went home. The babies “seemed tired” but appeared otherwise to be OK, the mother said.
However, the next morning, they were clearly not OK.
Their lips were blue, and they were lethargic. “Tyson walked just about to … the entrance of my living room and just lay down and wouldn’t get up,” the mother said. “Dallas, the best she could, ran to me.”
‘You’re taking those kids to the ER. They look like they’re dying.’
Dallas lay on her mother, who was seated on the floor. “She felt heavy and she didn’t want to leave me, and she seemed tired,” Andrea said.
Both toddlers had diarrhea, and Andrea noticed their “typical toddler potbelly” was gone.
Tyson looked a little worse than Dallas. “His eyes were sunken back [with] black, dark circles. They both had a blue to their mouths.”
After observing the twins for a moment, Andrea called her mother-in-law, who lives just down the street.
“We need to send these kids to the ER. This is not OK,” Andrea told her. Next, she called Nathaniel, who was at work, to let him know she and his mother were taking the babies to the emergency room.
Andrea also video-called her own mom to show her how the toddlers looked. “I kind of felt like I was going crazy a little bit” in thinking that the twins “didn’t look right,” she said.
Upon seeing the babies, Andrea’s mom told her, “Yeah, you’re taking those kids to the ER. They look like they’re dying.”
Andrea and her mother-in-law drove to the ER. The doctor there assessed the toddlers by touching their faces and looking in their mouths.
At first, the doctor “seemed like he didn’t know what was going on,” the mother said.
But when Andrea told him that the twins had just received three vaccines yesterday, and which vaccines they were, the doctor said, “Oooh …” and told her the babies could very well be having a bad reaction to the vaccinations.
The doctor gave the twins Tylenol and popsicles, which they were instructed to eat on the spot so the ER staff could see if they would throw up. If they didn’t throw up, they could go home.
Dallas and Tyson ate the popsicles without throwing up, so they went home. The toddlers continued to be tired and have diarrhea. Tyson also threw up a few times.
Tommey asked, “Nathaniel, when you came back from work and saw your babies, what did you think about the state of their health?”
The father said he was “kind of in disbelief that just so quickly — within a matter of 24 hours — the kids have went from perfectly happy-go-lucky active babies to looking like they were dying.”
Pediatric nurse advises diet change to address symptoms
All that week, Dallas and Tyson continued to experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fatigue. They also wouldn’t drink out of their sippy cups.
The morning of April 30, Andrea tried getting them in to see a pediatrician but was told the office wasn’t accepting walk-ins that day.
So she spoke with the pediatrician’s nurse. By that time, most of the twins’ symptoms had subsided except for the diarrhea. The nurse told her to put them on a gentle BRAT diet of bananas, rice, applesauce and toast.
That was the only day since their shots that the toddlers were active, the mother said. “They were eating fine, they were drinking out of their sippy cups fine. They were talking normally, finally, and they didn’t want to sleep all day.”
That night, the toddlers went to sleep in their shared bed.
Medical experts had advised the parents to have the twins sleep in a shared bed, Andrea said.
“When twins sleep together — say one is sick and the other isn’t — it’s almost like their bond heals each other,” she explained. “So they said, really up until we can’t have ’em in the same bed anymore because they’re the opposite gender, that it’s best to keep them in the same bed to keep that bond.”
‘Hey, I hate to inform you, but your kids are dead’
On the morning of May 1, the toddlers didn’t make noises signaling that they were ready to leave their room.
Andrea peeked in on them and saw the twins were in their usual sleeping position. “They were belly sleepers. Of course, they were old enough at the time to roll over.”
Nathaniel — who works very early in the morning until mid-afternoon — had already left for work.
Andrea cleaned up the living room while she waited for the twins to wake up. “When I went in there to wake them up, is when I found them the way they were.”
She touched Tyson. He was cold. She flipped him up from lying on his belly and immediately ran for her phone to call 911.
“That’s when I flipped Tyson over and saw her the same way,” she said.
The police and ambulance arrived. Andrea led the officer to the toddlers’ room.
“How did the police treat you both?” Tommey asked the parents.
Andrea and Nathaniel paused while exchanging a look. Nathaniel said he was treated with “the most disrespect” that he has ever experienced.
Instead of giving him and Andrea some time to process the fact that their only two children have just died, the police went “straight to interrogation.”
The police seemed to assume that one of the parents had killed the children, he said.
They “constantly” tried to pit him and Andrea against each other by getting them to say, “Well, I think she did it, or I think he did it.”
“They were just very adamant that we had done it,” Nathaniel said.
The police confiscated Andrea’s phone, so she initially wasn’t able to call Nathaniel at work to tell him their children had died.
Their landlord called Nathaniel. “Hey, what’s going on? The police have taped up your trailer.” Nathaniel told the landlord he didn’t know and would call Andrea to find out.
But none of his calls went through, since the police had confiscated her phone.
Only when Nathaniel called his mother did he find out his children had died — and it was a police officer, not his mother, who answered his mother’s phone.
According to Nathaniel, the officer basically said, “Hey, I hate to inform you, but your kids are dead.”
“And I was like, ‘You’re lying. You’re not telling me the truth. This isn’t happening.”
The officer told him, “It’s the truth. You need to be down at the sheriff’s office.”
Police launch criminal investigation
The police immediately launched a criminal investigation into the babies’ deaths, Idaho News 6 reported. On the second day of interrogation, the detectives explained to Andrea their theory of how the babies died.
“They said that it wasn’t medical and that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” she said.
Tommey asked, “How does that make you feel?”
“It made me feel crazy,” Andrea said, “because I was telling them my truth and they were getting into my head that I had done it — and I know I hadn’t.”
Tommey asked, “How does that make you feel, Nathaniel? That they’re accusing your wife of doing terrible things?”
He said he told the detectives he was angry they thought his wife had the capacity to do such a thing, “as she was such a loving and caring mother to the point where even new foods, she would go through everything that was in it as an ingredient to make sure that nothing was toxic.”
‘These kids were the light of everyone’s world that came into contact with them’
Nathaniel and Andrea said their twins were “caring, sweet, loving children.”
Rather than being rambunctious as some people expected of twins, the two were mellow. They even put away their toys at bedtime without having to be asked, Nathaniel said. “They were smart — very smart — kids.”
“These kids were the light of everyone’s world that came into contact with them,” the father said.
Tyson “didn’t care who you were or what you did. He thought everyone was cool.” Dallas “always had the best smile,” Andrea said. Nathaniel agreed.
He said:
“If I had a bad day at work, I could walk in knowing that my daughter was going to run to me as soon as I opened that door and just be there for me, love on me, make sure that I am OK.”
One of Nathaniel’s best memories with Tyson was taking him to a local truck pull.
Some people might question how it’s possible they both died at roughly the same time, but the parents said it wasn’t surprising since they did basically everything at the same time.
Andrea explained:
“They learned how to talk at the same time. They tried new foods at the same time … Everything was at the same time. They had a bond. And I don’t think even I comprehend the bond between twins …
“They had got their shots at the same time by two nurses at the same time, and they got sick [with the] same symptoms at the same time the following morning.”
Plus, they both came from the same line, on their dad’s side, of people who had had bad reactions to the flu vaccine.
Andrea added, though, that their favorite movies differed.
Dallas adored Strawberry Shortcake while Tyson loved Lightning McQueen from the Cars movies.
Click here to assist the parents.
Watch CHD.TV’s interview with the parents:
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HEP, dTAP and flu shots all in one day for 18 month old babies should not be allowed.
HEP, dTAP and flu shots all in one day for 18 month old babies should not be allowed.