Kare11
North Texas woman claims baby fell onto ER floor after birth
Makayla Thomas shared a video with WFAA of what she says happened at a freestanding emergency room. The ER would not answer our questions.
DALLAS — For years, Makayla Thomas prayed for a baby.
“I struggled with fertility for a while,” the North Texas woman told WFAA.
In February, she and her husband Joe got their wish. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh I’m finally pregnant!’ We’ve been together for 11 years.”
Thomas started documenting milestones on her journey to motherhood, photographing and videotaping her pregnancy tests, sonograms, hospital visits and more. But what would later happen was worse than anything she and her husband could have prepared for.
“This was not supposed to happen,” she said.
Their story starts in June when Thomas went to Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas three separate times over two weeks with abdominal pain.
During her third stay on June 25, Thomas’ medical paperwork said she was diagnosed with a kidney infection. Thomas told WFAA the kidney infection was caused by a “possibly untreated UTI,” which was also documented in her paperwork.
She stayed in the hospital through the 27th under observation, medical records show.
“They discharged me, and said, ‘Just take the new antibiotics, and you’ll be fine,’” she recalled.
Two days later, Thomas woke up again in pain. This time, though, she did not go back to Presbyterian. “I had been there three times,” she said.
Frustrated that her pain still had not improved, and at 26 weeks pregnant, on June 29, Thomas instead went to a freestanding ER called Preston Hollow Emergency Room.
“I thought I’m going to go to the emergency room, and hope they can do something about this pain and kidney infection,” she said.
“Never at that moment…did I think I was going through labor.”
At the ER
Thomas’ paperwork from Preston Hollow confirms she arrived in abdominal pain and with vaginal bleeding. Thomas said she was in the room alone after being checked and screened as she waited for a doctor. Her documents say a physician was notified.
“Very scary,” she said.
Her pain got worse, she said, and she suddenly felt the urge to push. Kidney infections, according to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, can cause pre-term labor.
“I was just like ‘Oh my God! Did I push out my baby?” she recalled.
Makayla said she pushed out her baby by herself, and that her baby rolled off the bed onto the floor. She recorded what happened next in a series of cell phone videos. The first video she shared with WFAA shows Thomas’ baby on the floor.
“I’m going to have to pick up your child, okay?” a medical employee says on the video. The video shows that an employee scooped the baby off the ground.
“How many weeks do you think you are?” the employee asks her.
Thomas’s baby was born in en caul, a rare type of birth, roughly 1 in every 80,000, where a baby is delivered still inside the amniotic sac. Thomas said she filmed this intimate moment because she was stunned, unsure if what came out was even her baby.
“I was really in a state of shock,” she said.
“So that’s the baby?” Thomas is heard asking in the video.
“Yeah,” an employee replies.
“Is that the baby? Is it dead?” Thomas asks.
“It appears to be…yeah,” an employee replies.
Later in the video, an employee says, “It may have had some genetic abnormality or something, it appears so…but we’re still going to transfer you over just to get checked out and make sure everything, you know, came out.”
“It was just so nonchalant,” Thomas told WFAA. “They were examining her but not attending to her medically.”
The video ends there and Thomas says the medical workers leave again. She started recording a second video caressing her baby girl, thinking her first time holding her daughter would be her last.
“If this is the only time I’m going to see her in the flesh,” Thomas told WFAA. “I’m going to record it and make sure I have all my memories.”
A third video shows an ER employee appearing to listen for the baby’s heartbeat. The video ends when they tell her she cannot film.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry you can’t record,” a medical worker is heard saying.
“But this is my baby,” Thomas replies before the video cuts off.
Thomas picks the camera back up for a fourth video. In it, her baby has been cut out of the amniotic sac, but the video ends when she’s told again to stop recording.
In a fifth video, a medical worker is doing chest compressions on the newborn.
“He said there’s a faint heartbeat, I was like ‘Oh my God, she’s still here,’” Thomas remembered.
Thomas’ medical records say her baby was given oxygen after a heartbeat was confirmed, but that is not seen in any of the videos she took.
The director of operations for Preston Hollow Emergency Room declined to answer our questions about Makayla’s care, even when we told her Makayla would give written permission to discuss her treatment.
“We follow all state regulations that every freestanding emergency room has to follow,” said Mandi Sralla, the ER’s director of operations.
Presbyterian also declined to answer questions about Thomas’ care at their hospital, citing patient privacy laws.
‘Painful to watch’
“It was painful to watch the video, I’ll be real honest,” retired obstetrician and gynecologist Melinda Morris told WFAA.
We asked her to review not only the videos Thomas took inside Preston Hollow ER, but also her hospital medical records.
“It was obvious they didn’t know what to do with this baby,” she said.
Dr. Morris said Thomas’ baby should have immediately been taken out of the amniotic sac, and should have been resuscitated and given oxygen without hesitation. It’s unclear from the medical documents and videos we have how long exactly her baby was deprived of oxygen.
Dr. Morris said brain damage “starts to occur after just four minutes.”
“When these babies are delivered en caul with that amniotic sac around them, they’re like in a dry cleaner bag. There’s no oxygen there.”
Dr. Morris said freestanding ERs often lack the equipment and trained staff to respond to obstetrical emergencies.
“These freestanding [clinics] really owe these obstetrical patients some warnings,” she said. “They should tell them upfront, there should be a sign at the desk that says, ‘If you’re an obstetrical patient, we’re not adequately equipped.’”
Thomas said Preston Hollow ER providers did eventually say they’d have to transfer her to a hospital. But only after she was already in her room, and moments before she began to deliver.
“When I was practicing, I would have ladies go to these standalones and it was very frightening,” Dr. Morris said.
“We were having to wait for an ambulance to come to pick them up and transport them over to the hospital where we were, you know, and when you’re dealing with an obstetrical patient in crisis, every minute makes a difference on the outcome of the baby.”
The Texas Association of Freestanding Emergency Centers is a member-based group that promotes freestanding ERs and advocates for fair regulation of them. The executive director, Andrea Connell, told WFAA Preston Hollow is not a member, but issued this statement:
“Licensed by Texas HHS, FECs are staffed with experienced emergency medicine physicians and nurses and are equipped to handle all emergency situations, including obstetrical/gynecological. In emergent cases, the patient would be stabilized and, if necessary, transferred to a higher level of care. This would be the identical process for most rural emergency departments and many urban emergency departments who do not have an active labor and delivery service.
“FECs routinely provide appropriate, timely care for ob/gyn patients. They identify ectopic pregnancies, placenta previa, blighted ovum, and other potentially life-threatening conditions in a fraction of the time as over-crowded emergency departments. FEC’s have long-standing relationships and hold well-established transfer agreements with local hospitals to ensure rapid transition to the most appropriate facility after stabilization. FECs have provided care for tens of thousands of ob/gyn emergencies since their inception.
“It is well-proven that emergencies benefit most from rapid assessment, treatment, and stabilization. For a physician to encourage potentially critically ill pregnant women to bypass the closest emergency department, such as an FEC, places her and her child at unnecessary risk in a very volatile time. We strongly disagree with this recommendation due to the risk it places on patients. As always, our industry welcomes the opportunity to engage with the ob/gyn community to discuss any and all areas to improve the quality-of-care offered to our patients.”
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission licenses and regulates freestanding emergency rooms. When asked if the department provides guidance on how they should handle obstetrical emergencies, a spokesperson only directed us to state law, which lays out a freestanding ER’s transfer policy requirements.
“The facility must provide medical treatment within its capacity that minimizes risk to the individual’s health and, in the case of a woman in labor, the health of the unborn child,” the state law says.
Heaven Grace
Thomas and her baby were eventually transported from Preston Hollow ER to Medical City Hospital, where doctors saved her baby’s life. Her name is Heaven Grace.
“I thought I was saying goodbye to my first child,” Thomas told WFAA. “And now she’s alive.”
Thomas feels blessed to have her baby, but she is also afraid for her baby. While Heaven’s final prognosis is not yet clear, medical records say “a lack of oxygen” caused her coma, that she is in a “vegetative state,” and that she may never fully recover.
“We are just praying and praying and praying,” Thomas said.
Thomas said Preston Hollow’s director of operations called her in mid-July. Thomas said she was apologetic, and said they would investigate what happened to her. She also received a note in the mail, explaining how to pay her bill.
It also had a handwritten message: “We appreciate you trusting us with your care. We hope you are doing better!”
“I definitely do believe if they had started reviving her right away when they came in the room and saw, this could have been a lot different,” Thomas said.
“I feel like they failed me.”
Thomas and her husband are now trying to raise money to help with her recovery on GoFundMe. The link to that page can be found here.
Kare11
Prosecutors strike plea deal in Nudieland shooting
The agreement requires 18-year-old Cyrell Boyd to testify against co-defendant Dominic Burris and serve time at the Red Wing juvenile corrections facility.
MINNEAPOLIS — Calling him a “lesser-involved” defendant in a shooting that killed one person and injured others, Hennepin County prosecutors have struck a deal with 18-year-old Cyrell Boyd that will allow him to avoid doing hard time in prison.
Boyd agreed to testify against co-defendant Dominic Burris, who the county attorney’s office accuses of firing a gun multiple times into a crowd at a punk music show known as Nudieland back in August 2023. One victim – August Golden – was killed and at least six others injured in the incident.
The shooting occurred when Boyd was 17 years old. He was originally charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and six other felony counts.
“The plea deal that we have agreed to with Mr. Boyd is critical to us pursuing an intentional murder case against Dominic Burris, who was the instigator and main perpetrator of the terrible events that occurred at Nudieland,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said.
“Mr. Boyd provided critical evidence that allowed us to develop an ironclad case against Mr. Burris. This led us to change our plea offer for Mr. Burris which includes an increased period of incarceration and will require him to admit to intentional second-degree murder, reflecting his primary role in this horrific incident.”
In exchange for providing evidence and testifying against Burris, Boyd will avoid serving hard prison time for his role in the fatal incident. Instead, he will serve a sentence at the Red Wing juvenile justice facility, take part in intensive therapy to address what prosecutors call a “significant trauma history,” and receive stayed sentences at both the juvenile and adult levels of 86 and 110 months.
In total, Boyd will be under state supervision until he is 26 years old. If he does not comply with terms of probation, he could serve time in adult prison.
In a news release, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says while Boyd’s participation in the deadly shooting “demands accountability,” they say he played a significantly lesser role in the incident than his co-defendant.
According to the charges filed against the teens, witnesses say that Burris and Boyd “hit” on two people at the backyard concert, attended mostly by members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Witnesses told investigators that when their advances were turned down, the defendants made “insensitive” comments and derogatory epithets about the sexual orientation of people at the concert. Shots were fired soon after.
Kare11
Minnesota Zoo gives rare look at private tiger den
The striped siblings were born in May and are growing quickly. Discover their diet, sleeping quarters and more in this KARE 11 Extra.
APPLE VALLEY, Minn. — The time is 7:30 a.m. at the Minnesota Zoo, and it opens at 9.
Zookeeper Maggie Estby is knocking out a number of tasks, like preparing breakfast for a family of endangered tigers. And forget Frosted Flakes! These guys eat horse meat with added vitamins and nutrients.
Toronto Zoo researchers developed the diet, and it allows snacks.
“I’m just gonna put some gloves on first,” Estby said. “This is chunk muscle meat. We use this as kind of like treat meat … This is something the cats usually really enjoy.”
Now Estby leads the way to a behind-the-scenes den, where everyone must mask up to help protect the tigers from COVID, she says.
“So if you guys wanna just make sure the bar door is closed behind you,” she said.
And there they all are, including two special cubs. Brother and sister Andre and Amalia were born at the Zoo back in May as part of an international species survival plan.
“We’re getting to the point where we do have to separate the cubs when we’re feeding them,” Estby said.
But filial piety: Estby feeds their parents and older siblings first.
“This is dad, Luca, down here,” she said. “Hi buddy. Good morning.”
Whether wild or zoo, tiger fathers don’t have anything to do with their cubs after breeding is over. So, the twins stay close to their mom, Dari. After all, they’re still nursing. Plus, Dari’s a pro. This is her third and likely last liter.
Dari’s backstory stands on its own, but in short: Dari’s mother neglected her and the Minnesota Zoo intervened to keep the lineage alive. Curator Diana Weinhardt has known Dari since she was born.
“Well, it took a little bit of work, but she’s got a great team,” Weinhardt said. “We all went to garage sales and just got a bunch of toys for her when she was a cub, and now her cubs are – we have sturdier equipment now, but these cubs are, they’re tough!”
“They’re getting very, very, vocal,” Estby said between roars.
But no one’s upset. The cubs are just finding their voice, she said.
“She’s chuffing at me when I do that, which is a friendly greeting,” said Dr. Annie Revis while joining Estby on the other side of the den at around 8 a.m. for a mock medical check.
Revis is the Minnesota Zoo’s director of animal health.
“This has been my dream job,” Revis said. “I’ve wanted to be a vet and really a zoo vet since I was 3 years old.”
In the mock medical check, the cubs take turns lining up and laying down between two wooden boards.
“Lay down,” Revis said. “There you go, good.”
They’re rewarded with treats, just like a house pet. By the way, Andre weighs about the size of a large dog, 50 pounds. Amalia, 45 — and growing.
“Especially going into winter here, we want them to kind of keep that cub chub on,” Estby said. “It’s easy to tell them apart from a distance by their tails.”
Dr. Reevis is now lightly pinching their furry butts – and not just cuz they’re cute. It’s so they can get used to human touch and the feel of an injection.
“All of our tigers get very similar vaccines that your domestic cat would get, so rabies vaccines, the feline viral diseases and the kind of unique one is they also get vaccinated for canine distemper, which is, you know, thought of as a dog problem but our big cats are also susceptible to it,” Revis said.
The cubs were vaccinated shortly after birth and are caught up on shots now. They’re not taking any meds either.
“So, unless there’s a problem, we don’t check on them,” Revis explained.
But for this demo, Dr. Reevis shines a flashlight to check their golden-brown eyes.
Now it’s 8:30 a.m. and Estby must prepare the public tiger den. She carries outside what looks like three silicone bunt cake pans and places them spaciously apart on the ground.
“This is a bloodsicle,” Estby said. “This is the blood leftover from where we get their meat … Mix it with a little bit of water, freeze it, and it becomes an awesome treat for these guys.”
Next, she sprays perfume on a large pumpkin and other enrichment items on the ground like antlers and tree logs.
“It’s just perfume,” Estby said with a chuckle. “Yep, this is actual body spray for humans and they love it.”
Now, she’s checking the entire perimeter for any openings in the fence. This is a very important step.
“I mean, we’re putting tigers out there, which is very dangerous, and overnight you never know what happened,” Estby said. “You know, trees fall. Storms happen. It gets windy.”
She also checks around for new scratch marks. Zookeepers want to protect the trees from big cat claws, so sometimes they wrap them to discourage the tigers from climbing up too far.
Guess what also travels far: tiger pee! So Estby wipes down the windows every morning to ensure visitors have a clear view of the glass.
And already, she can see some guests. That’s because people with Minnesota Zoo Memberships are allowed onto the grounds early.
In fact, the Minnesota Zoo reports every day since September, when the striped siblings made their public debut, zoo members have been showing up in time to catch the moment Dari and her cubs enter the den for the day.
“They’re so very cute,” one zoogoer said.
“I just want to cuddle ’em,” another responded.
The cubs always stay out until only Dari decides it’s time to go back to the private sleeping quarters, which on this day turns out to be 1:45 p.m. Tigers are mostly nocturnal, you know.
The Minnesota Zoo is currently open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, including weekends.
Kare11
Wisconsin law enforcement believe missing kayaker might be alive
Data from a laptop showed Ryan Borgwardt may have fled to Eastern Europe.
MINNEAPOLIS — A missing Wisconsin man authorities thought had drowned might be alive in Europe.
Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said Ryan Borgwardt went kayaking on Aug. 11 on Green Lake and never returned home. His deputies found his kayak overturned. They believe it capsized, so he started to swim without a life jacket. A fisherman found his fishing rod two days later, while someone else found his tackle box.
Podoll called Keith Cormican with Bruce’s Legacy, a volunteer search and recovery group for drowned victims, to help find Borgwardt. Cormican started the nonprofit in honor of his brother, Bruce, a Black River Falls firefighter who drowned searching for a missing father.
Cormican helped Podall with searches at Green Lake in the past, and felt confident they would find Borgwardt because of all the cellphone data.
“I was thinking a day or two I would have this wrapped up,” Cormican said.
But it turned into 23 days.
“We had covered that lake like I had never covered any other lake. We just scoured that thing just assuming he was there and based on that cellphone information,” he said.
Cormican said his team worked tirelessly to find him using sonar equipment and a remote operated vehicle — basically an underwater drone with lights — cameras and its sonar to check target areas. So, when they couldn’t find him, he knew something was off.
“It was the multiple days of just scouring this area kept building to the question of whether he’s there or not,” Cormican said. “He should have shown up on the sonar information.”
He said he noticed a few flags early on, but they continued to search based on the initial investigation and wanting to get closure for the family.
“One of the driving forces to keeping us searching on the lake is always the support from the family and the local department,” he said.
Cormican eventually had a conversation with Podoll about continuing the search at the lake. He said he started to think something else happened and they needed to check other places.
Podoll said they renewed their investigative efforts based on what Cormican said because he’s an expert at what he does and Cormican was confident there wasn’t a body in the lake.
Shortly after they learned Borgwardt’s name had been checked by Canadian law enforcement on August 13 with help from the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center. Then he learned Borgwardt reported his passport was missing and got another on May 22. His family found his original passport.
Podoll said they were able to analyze a family laptop and discovered the hard drive was replaced, search browser had been cleared the day he disappeared, passport photos, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks, he was talking with a woman from Uzbekistan, and he took out a $375,000 life insurance policy in January.
“Just the information that we gleaned from the computer lead us to believe, he’s not in the lake, he’s out of the state of Wisconsin, and he’s in some other country. Do we know that he’s alive? No, we don’t know that yet,” Podoll said.
Investigators believe he faked his own death and ran away to Europe.
Podoll said they searched for Borgwardt for 54 days. They’ve since ended all search efforts at the lake.
The sheriff said this has been a difficult time for the family.
“They’re doing OK. It’s a whole switch now from having their loved one drowned and to now knowing he’s out of the country some place,” he said.
“I’m very surprised that somebody could actually do this. First time it’s ever happened to me. I’ve been doing this for 34 years,” Cormican said.
Cormican said he was shocked to hear he might still be alive.
“Multiple feelings. I mean right of way it was kind of a relief knowing that he is alive for one thing, and that I didn’t miss him because he’s not there. I was really questioning my abilities having done this for so many years,” he said.
What makes this news difficult to hear now is that he got called to help with other searches while looking for Borgwardt.
“That’s the sad part about it. I was getting requests to go out to Green Bay to search for a young man out on the lake so that kind of put a damper in that search. I split my time up between the two of them,” he said. “Then later into that search I got asked to out to Wyoming for an individual that was originally from Wisconsin, parents are from Wisconsin, and he is from Minneapolis, so I had to delay that because I was bound and determined to get this guy found first.”
He said he’ll be able to move past this, but he knows it won’t be as easy for the family.
Podoll said he’s never seen anything like this, and his office won’t stop searching for him.
“His entire family is here for him. They miss him, and we just want him back. We can deal with the situations and what he got himself into, that we can deal with, it’s just get back home to his children,” Podoll said.
In the meantime, Podoll said they are trying to see what crimes were committed and figuring out how much this search and recovery cost taxpayers.
“We don’t have an exact figure. We’re putting that together. Our plan is to get some kind of restitution request,” he said.
Podoll is encouraging people who have any information or may have knowingly or unknowingly helped Borgwardt to contact the sheriff’s office or the Green Lake County Crime Stoppers.
You can text “GETTHEM” to 847411 or call 1-800-GET THEM.