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On March 22, 2015, four-month-old Adam Seagull was discovered dead at his home day care center in Fairfield, Connecticut.
The day care center was unlicensed, but had been in practice for 11 years by a local woman called Carol Cardillo.
When questioned by the police, Cardillo explained that she had given Adam a bottle around 12pm and placed him in a play crib to take a nap. When she checked on him almost three hours later, Adam was no longer responding.
The four other adults in the day care did not apparently notice.
Investigators report that Adam’s body didn’t show any signs of being ill or traumatized, which led doctors to conclude that Adam had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
SIDS is the phenomenon of an unexplained death of a child less than 12 months old. Doctors say the cause is unknown, but most likely has to do with how the infant’s brain controls breathing during sleep. If the brain fails to send the proper breathing signals through the infant’s body, the baby will stop breathing and die because of this.
One of the most common cause of SIDS is allowing a child to sleep on their front or side, or on a very soft surface.
Recently, however, an autopsy completed by the state medical examiner presented new evidence regarding Adam’s death.
The autopsy revealed that Adam had passed away not from SIDS, but acute diphenhydramine intoxication. This is the chemical found in Benadryl.
Cardillo has said that she did not give the baby any Benadryl, but is now under fresh investigation.
The police acknowledge Cardillo may have accidentally administered Adam too much Benadryl – and not have done this intentionally – “but certainly, negligence would be a factor in administering a lethal dose of anything to an infant.”
We await new developments and keep the Seagull family in our thoughts.
