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Q&A: Incomplete SUDI Probes and Babies Dying in Parents’ Arms

Day 3 · 8:05:07 · Cst. Helen Grus · Shawn Buckley · Dean Allison

  • 📋 Some cases lacked completed SUDI questionnaires; one was closed within 24 hours without autopsy review.
  • 💔 Two previously healthy babies collapsed and died in parents’ arms while being fed—something Grus had never seen in 19 years.
  • ❤️ One autopsy showed an enlarged heart, echoing the sudden death of 17-year-old Sean Hartman after Pfizer.

Details of investigative shortfalls and two highly unusual infant collapses.

← Q&A: Did Infant Deaths Rise Pre-Vaccine or Only After? | Q&A: Suspended After Raising Baby-Death Concerns with Chief →

Transcript

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:05:07

I also, when I had gone into those records, I had seen that a couple cases were not concluded thoroughly. When we investigate sudden unexpected deaths in infants, there's what's called a SUDI questionnaire in Ontario. It was put together with the coroner's and pathologist's office. It's a series, there's over 100, well over 100 questions that we must ask during the course of this investigation. So some of the cases did not have that SUDI questionnaire completed. There's one case that had been concluded within 21— 24 hours of the baby dying, so no autopsy results had been received. And that concerned me as a detective. I've been a detective since 2007. So just looking at this, I thought—.

Shawn Buckley · 8:05:53

So let me just slow this down because you've been in this unit since 2017—.

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:05:57

2016.

Dean Allison · 8:05:58

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley · 8:05:58

And, um, I imagine that you, for an investigation into an unexplained death of a baby, that there was kind of a certain standard that you would see amongst all the officers in the unit that were doing this. Was there a change here in the level of investigation that was done?

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:06:20

Again, I, I can only— there I'd have to speculate. So I, I— there was no The policy remained. We were supposed to complete the SUDI questionnaires, um, and so, so to say that there was a change, I think it's more potentially a lack of experience with some of the officers. And, um, so I can't speak to— but policy had not changed. It was per policy that the SUDI questionnaire was to be completed thoroughly by ourselves or the coroners, but The police have to ensure that that is done. And as I said, the one case that was concluded, I was— what struck me, there was an add-on to that. There was two of these baby cases through talk in the unit that I'd found out that when the parents— they were— the babies were sent home healthy, the parents picked them up to feed them and they collapsed and died in the parents' arms. I, at that time, I'd been a police officer for 19 years.

Cst. Helen Grus · 8:07:20

I had never heard of that as a police officer. So in that career time that I had, it's those 2 weeks that I lost sleep because something was wrong.