Fort Worth woman accused of suffocating baby, faking medical condition to be sentenced
A 23-year-old woman accused of trying to suffocate her baby daughter in Fort Worth is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday.
Shawna Renae Bieber told doctors in March 2019 that her baby would stop breathing on her own, but was caught on video squeezing her until she fell unconscious, according to an arrest warrant affidavit written by Mike Weber, an investigator with the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.
In February 2019, Bieber took her then-7-month-old daughter to Cook Children’s Medical Center and claimed she would stop breathing and turn blue. However, medical staff found nothing wrong with the baby.
On Feb. 7, Bieber emerged from the girl’s hospital room and said she’d found her daughter blue. Nurses entered to find the baby breathing again but “very blue” and “still limp and disturbingly lifeless.”
The baby was transferred to the intensive care unit and moved on Feb. 9 to a hospital room with hidden cameras.
On Feb. 12, hospital staff alerted Weber to their suspicions that Bieber was depriving the baby of oxygen.
Three days later, Bieber was shown on video either squeezing or suffocating the baby against her chest, Weber wrote in the affidavit. In the video, she holds her daughter while seated in a rocking chair, then “appears to grip the victim tightly immediately before the victim’s right leg began to kick.”
After about 30 seconds, the baby’s right leg appears to go limp in the video, Weber wrote about the footage. Audible alarms with blinking colored lights begin to go off in the room, indicating the child has low oxygen levels, the affidavit states. After the alarm sounds for 30-45 seconds, the suspect “leans a lifeless victim back from her chest and places the victim on her back in the crib.”
Bieber can then be seen pushing the nurse call button and standing over her daughter for another four or five seconds before walking out of the room to retrieve a nurse.
Nurses told Weber they came into the room to find the baby pale and breathing rapidly with a respiration rate over 80 — consistent with “recovery from a suffocation event.”
When asked what happened by one of the nurses, Bieber claimed that her daughter was sitting upright in the crib, then threw herself back and started having breathing issues.
The incident, according to the affidavit, occurred less than an hour after Bieber had been informed by a doctor that there was no reason for the baby to remain hospitalized and that the baby could be discharged with a monitor.
Bieber’s is the latest alleged case in Tarrant County of what’s frequently known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a disorder in which a person exaggerates or creates medical symptoms in another to gain attention.
The baby, now 2 years old, is in foster care and, though monitored, has had no apnea episodes since being removed from her mother, states the affidavit.
Bieber had another daughter, Annabelle Rose Davis, who died in February 2016 at 3 months from what was ruled as natural causes. Bieber previously lived in Cleburne. Her defense attorney was not available for comment Monday afternoon.
