Day 3: Babies at Risk

Robert Walker Jr.

May 10, 1998-Sept. 5, 1998
Undetermined

Robert was born and died without any intervention by the District's child protection agency -- even though the agency was aware that his mother had been having trouble caring for the five children in her family for several years.

In 1991, the agency received a call complaining that the woman was spending public assistance money on crack, not providing food or clothing for her children and leaving them with unwilling caretakers. The case was eventually closed because the social worker could not find the mother, who lived under five aliases. In 1993, after another complaint, the agency removed three of the children and placed them with a relative. Two other children were later placed in foster care.

Robert was born in May 1998 at D.C. General Hospital. The year before, his mother had been reported to Child and Family Services for giving birth to a cocaine-exposed baby who needed surgery. But the agency closed that case before Robert's birth.

Robert also was born exposed to cocaine, and his mother told nurses she used drugs and alcohol during her pregnancy. It is unclear whether anyone from the hospital contacted Child and Family Services. But the agency did not open a case to monitor Robert.

"They should have taken that baby away," said Robert's uncle, Aaron Pledger.

Four months later, Robert was found dead in his parents' bed in an unkempt home, where police found drug paraphernalia and spoiled milk but no formula or diapers. Committee documents state that Robert's mother drank large quantities of alcohol and smoked crack in the days before his death, and the committee wrote that Robert's death was "suspicious." The cause of his death remains undetermined.