By Dave Andrusko
Tiffany Knapp
I first read about Tiffany Knapp on Monday but the story was so terrible it took me two days to write about what police in Idaho said she did to her baby girl.
The overriding good news is that now 15-month old baby girl survived. But no thanks to Ms. Knapp.
Under the headline, “Police say Caldwell mom fed baby just Kool-Aid and diluted milk,” The Idaho Stateman’s Audrey Dutton writes that following a six-month investigation
Tiffany Knapp is charged with felony injury to a child after Caldwell police officers and child protection workers found her baby girl near death due to malnourishment.
Police records say that on March 8, officers from the Caldwell Police Department responded to a home where child protection workers from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare had been following up on “ongoing concerns” for the baby’s safety.
The baby was “severely malnourished and underweight,” and an officer spoke to Knapp and the baby’s stepfather, who both were the primary caretakers.
The baby girl weighed 11 pounds.
“A healthy eight-month-old girl reportedly weighs between 17 and 21.5 pounds,” The Daily Mail reported.
Police had performed a welfare check on the infant and found she only weighed 11 pounds, lower than the average for a child that age, court documents stated. The child was taken to the emergency room at the West Valley Medical Center (pictured) where doctors said she was near death due to malnutrition.
She was then taken to West Valley Medical Center’s emergency room.
The baby’s problems began when she was born three months premature and had trouble adding weight. Later at four months, the baby’s pediatrician admitted her to the hospital because she was “significantly underweight.”
While she gained weight in the hospital, according to police records, the parents did not get the special formula [Neosure] the doctor said the baby needed or call the doctor’s office. Dutton reported, “When asked why she had not filled the prescription, [Knapp’s] responses were inconsistent, first stating she hadn’t received a prescription, then later stating she was aware of the prescription but ‘just spaced it,’” and the parents failed to provide any accurate medical information about the baby, the police report said.”
So what did Knapp give her baby? “Kool-Aid and diluted whole milk as nourishment,” according to the officer’s report.
After entering foster care, in just 20 days, the baby gained more than four pounds. Quoting the police report, Dutton writes the baby “would have likely died of malnutrition within days of being seen, had she not received medical attention due to lack of nutrition and proper care.”
Knapp was arraigned last Tuesday. She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing before Judge John Meienhofer on October 11.