Parents seek answers in infant’s suffocation death

A hand-painted sand urn, about the size of a grapefruit, sits on display in the Noble family's Las Vegas residence.

Kevin and Tabatha Noble originally planned to drop the biodegradable urn in the ocean, but they haven't been able to part with it. Its contents are all that remain of their 2-month-old son, Hunter, who stopped breathing on Dec. 16, 2014, at an in-home day care facility.

"Not only did I lose my son, I lost a lifetime of being with him," said Kevin Noble, sitting near what was to be Hunter's first surfboard.

After a lengthy investigation, which included a neuropathology consultation by Stanford University Medical Center, the Clark County coroner's office determined that the cause of Hunter's death was accidental suffocation.

But Hunter's parents aren't satisfied with that explanation.

"When are we going to have answers? When are we going to find out what happened?" Tabatha Noble said in November.

The couple began their quest for more information in January by filing a wrongful-death lawsuit against Shining Stars Family Daycare; its owner, Tunde Csegedi; and her husband, Sayed "Sam" Abdelaziz. Csegedi operated the day care business in her southern Las Vegas home, not far from the M Resort.

"We don't care about money," Tabatha Noble said. "We care about just making sure that it doesn't happen again."

Attempts to reach Csegedi for comment on this story were not successful. Her attorney, Daniel Markoff, said Hunter's death has been emotional for everyone involved.

"I don't think my clients are really in the mood to talk about it," he said.

Although Markoff declined to discuss specific details surrounding Hunter's death, he denied that Csegedi was negligent.

"I don't believe that there was anything done by my client to cause this death," he said.

Protective order

Tensions between the parties boiled over in September, when Csegedi obtained a temporary protective order against Kevin Noble. According to her application, he had called and texted her multiple times with the message "God may forgive but Nobles don't." She also alleged he came to her house on the night of Aug. 31 "and started banging and kicking the door and yelled with a foul language to open the door and that we murdered his baby."

"After 40 minutes the police came, and they escorted him off my property," the application said.

Csegedi, 42, sought the protective order for herself, for Abdelaziz, 50, and for their two daughters, ages 12 and 16. She also requested an extended order. Extended orders may be enforced for up to a year and require a court hearing.

Kevin Noble responded with a motion to dissolve the protective order. In it, he wrote:

"The applicant allowed our 10 week old son to suffocate on December 16th, 2014 while he was in her care. We have tried to contact her to obtain the rest of his belongings that she has yet to return. This is the only contact we have had. We currently have a lawsuit against Csegedi and her husband. The claims of threats are false accusations and it is our understanding she is trying to use this protective order as leverage to divert from the fact that she is guilty of negligence that ultimately led to my 10 week old infant's death."

The parties came face to face, for the first time since Hunter's death, when they appeared in court Oct. 15 for a hearing on Csegedi's request to extend the protective order.

Kevin and Tabatha Noble cried throughout the hearing. After learning more of the underlying details, Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa declined to extend the protective order but told the parties they should communicate only through their attorneys in the future.

On Wednesday, the Nobles held a quiet vigil outside Csegedi's house to mark the one-year anniversary of Hunter's death. They placed signs in front of the home with the message "Justice4Hunter" and photos of the infant.

Just two weeks before the hearing in Saragosa's courtroom, Tabatha Noble gave birth to her second son, Greyson. He was born, as fate would have it, on Sept 28 — one year to the day after Hunter's birth.

Tabatha Noble said she and Kevin decided immediately after Hunter's death that they wanted to have another child. They weren't trying to replace Hunter, she said, but they wanted to fill the huge void in their lives.

"The first second I saw Hunter, your life feels fulfilled. This is what you were meant to do," Tabatha Noble said. "You were supposed to be a parent. So losing Hunter, we felt so empty because your world is gone. So having Greyson was, like you know, a light at the end of the tunnel for us, even though we're always going to miss Hunter."

Tabatha, 24, and Kevin, 38, were married in September 2011. After a couple of years, they decided it was time to have a baby.

They wanted only one child. Kevin Noble said he had hoped for a son to carry on his family's name.

After 13 hours of labor, the couple had a healthy boy. He weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and was 20 inches long.

"He looked like a butterball when he came out. He looked like a little man," Tabatha Noble said, chuckling.

She said he had personality from the start. He seemed serious, with his hands always crossed at his chest. When he was hungry, he would put his whole hand in his mouth.

"He was such a great baby," his mother said. "He never cried unless he was hungry or you put him on his stomach."

Or he had a dirty diaper, his father added.

"I've come to find after having Greyson, Hunter was definitely the exception, not the rule," Tabatha Noble said as she cradled a sleeping Greyson in her arms. "And I'm not just saying that because we lost Hunter. He really was a fabulous baby."

Kevin Noble, who owns a pool maintenance business, acknowledges he had trouble bonding with Hunter at first but said they "really started to hit it off" about two weeks before the infant's death.

Around that time, Tabatha Noble was preparing to end her maternity leave and return to work as a recruiter at Eastridge Workforce Solutions.

"I had gone to several day care facilities around the valley, and when I went and toured, I just thought that they had so many children, and I didn't think that that was the environment that I wanted my son in," she said. "I wanted him to have more one-on-one care."

Selecting a caregiver

Tabatha Noble learned about Shining Stars from a co-worker, whose daughter used the business for her children. She met with Csegedi and liked what she saw.

"I met with her twice, just asking her questions, making sure that I felt comfortable with the answers she provided me," Tabatha Noble said.

The home was clean and was decorated for the season with a large Christmas tree, she said. She also remembers noticing a certificate indicating that Csegedi had been trained in SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome.

Tabatha Noble returned to work on Dec. 8, 2014 — a Monday. That first week, she dropped Hunter off with Csegedi about 7 a.m. and picked him up at 5:30 p.m.

But by the second week, Hunter's parents were missing him. Kevin Noble rearranged his schedule so that he could stay home with Hunter on Mondays, and he was thinking about staying home on Tuesdays, too.

"We were getting connected," he said. "He was 2 months old. He was starting to mimic me and whatnot. It became, instead of a little baby that was always crying, he was turning into a little person right before my eyes."

On Dec. 15, Tabatha Noble called Csegedi and told her Hunter would be staying home that day.

"I don't know why I said this. I just said, 'He's not feeling well.' I didn't want to tell her over the phone that I was going to change the days."

The next day, she took Hunter to Csegedi and told her about the plan to reduce his schedule to four days a week.

"There was no reason for him to go to her that day; Kevin was home," Tabatha Noble said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

She said Csegedi seemed irritated about the change in Hunter's schedule, but she assured her she would continue to pay for five days of care each week. She then headed to work.

About 3:30 p.m. that Tuesday, Tabatha Noble received a call from Csegedi and immediately answered.

"She said — exactly — 'Hunter stopped breathing, and he's on his way to the hospital right now.'"

The shaking mother was in no shape to drive and asked her co-worker, the same one who had referred her to Shining Stars, to give her a ride to the hospital.

On the way, Tabatha sent Kevin a text message. She also called Csegedi and asked what had happened. Csegedi told her she had lain Hunter on his back in the playpen for a nap. She said she had checked on him 10 minutes later, and he was fine, but when she returned 10 minutes after that, he wasn't breathing.

Tabatha Noble remembers running to the emergency room after arriving at St. Rose Dominican Hospital, Siena campus in Henderson.

"I got to the room, and they were still resuscitating him or trying to resuscitate him, just a room full of doctors. As soon as I got there, they stopped. They stopped, because they said that he was already gone before he got to the hospital. They said there was nothing that they could do, and I just, I fell to the floor," she said, sobbing. "I didn't understand why they wouldn't just keep on trying to bring my baby back."

'Babies are so fragile'

As Kevin Noble raced to the hospital, he knew in his heart that his son was already gone. "Babies are so fragile," he recalled thinking.

When he reached the emergency room, Tabatha handed Hunter to him. As she did so, Hunter's head went back, and Kevin thought he heard his son take a breath. But what he heard was just the sound of air passing through the infant's tracheal tube.

Hunter was dead.

The infant's bruised nose stands out in his parents' last memories of him. An autopsy would follow, and the parents would wait almost five months to learn its results.

Las Vegas police also investigated but closed their case after finding that no crime had occurred.

Records obtained by the Nobles in the civil case include a Dec. 19, 2014, email from Cynthia Sauchak, an abuse and neglect specialist with the Metropolitan Police Department, to Dr. Lisa Gavin at the coroner's office.

According to the email, Sauchak and Detective Frances Emery spoke with Hunter's baby sitter about his sleeping position on the day he died.

"She initially held to her original version of placing the infant on his back, even after we told her there were signs of him being on his stomach when he went unresponsive," Sauchak wrote.

According to the email, the baby sitter then changed her story. She said she had lain Hunter on his back, but twice he woke up fussing, so she placed him on his stomach "to comfort him." He had no blankets.

When she returned to check on him 10 to 15 minutes later, he was unresponsive. She reported that his head was turned to the side and "not face down."

"She stated she did not disclose this at first because she was panicked," Sauchak wrote. "She then admitted that she had taken 'SIDS' classes and knew that she should place infants on their backs but found that some prefer being on their stomachs and felt that her frequent checks on the babies would prevent anything bad from happening."

Prone position

The section of Hunter's death certificate that asks for a description of how the injury occurred contains the words "placed prone."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 3,500 U.S. infants die suddenly and unexpectedly each year, and most of those deaths occur while the infant is sleeping in an unsafe sleeping environment.

SIDS, defined as the sudden death of an infant under the age of 1 that can't be explained after a thorough investigation is conducted, is the leading cause of death in infants. Such deaths are typically classified as natural.

According to sids.org, the website of the American SIDS Institute, "Accidental suffocation, a death resulting from full or partial airway obstruction causing death from oxygen deprivation and increased carbon dioxide, is classified as accidental. In most cases of sleep-related infant death, it is impossible to make a definitive classification of SIDS vs. accidental suffocation. Autopsy findings are similar and death scenes often reveal possible asphyxiating conditions, such as prone sleep or co-bedding, without clear evidence of airway obstruction."

To help reduce the risk of sleep-related infant deaths, the CDC advises parents and caregivers to "always place babies on their backs to sleep for every sleep."

According to the American SIDS Institute, babies should have plenty of "interactive tummy playtime," but babies should never be left unattended while on their stomachs.

Kevin Noble said he first tried "tummy time" with Hunter the day before he died, but the infant hated it. "He was screaming, and so I put him on his back," he said.

Tabatha Noble said Hunter "could hardly hold his head up" and had never rolled over on his own.

Gavin, who performed the autopsy, and Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg agreed to discuss Hunter's death only after receiving permission from the Noble family.

"We are very confident this child was in the prone position when he died," Fudenberg said.

Gavin said physical findings supported her opinion that Hunter died of suffocation. They included bruising of the infant's nose and eyelid, fluid in his lungs and swelling of his brain.

She said infants at that age may be able to lift their heads, even turn their heads from side to side, but "they're not going to be able to sustain that for a long period of time," particularly when they're sleeping.

Unlicensed facility

Tabatha Noble said she didn't realize until after Hunter's death that Shining Stars was not a licensed day care facility. Latisha Brown, child care licensing program manager for the Nevada Public and Behavioral Health Division, said child care providers may care for up to four children, in addition to their own children, without a license.

However, Brown said, "we actually recommend anyone caring for children be licensed." Licensing requires backgrounds checks and training on such topics as SIDS, CPR, first aid and child development.

Brown said her agency conducted an investigation after Hunter's death and determined that Csegedi "was working within the letter of the law." It is unclear whether Csegedi continues to operate a day care business.

The Nobles won't have to face leaving their newborn with a stranger again. Kevin Noble's mother, Suzanne "Sam" Noble, has moved in with them and will care for Greyson while they work.

"This guy — nobody gets him but me," she said of her new grandson.

The Nobles donated or packed away all of Hunter's belongings and started fresh with Greyson, "so he's not living in his brother's shadows."

Someday, Tabatha Noble will tell Greyson about the tragedy that led to his birth.

"Eventually I plan on telling him that he really did save his father," she said. "I feel that if I did not get pregnant with Greyson, I may have lost Kevin. He was extremely depressed and suicidal until I found out that I was pregnant, and then he knew that he had to pull himself together for Greyson."

Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Find her on Twitter: @CarriGeer