{"id":198871,"date":"2026-05-21T14:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/198871\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:13:10","slug":"new-parents-charged-in-hospital-maternity-ward-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/198871\/","title":{"rendered":"New parents charged in hospital maternity ward murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. \u2014 A mother and father allegedly murdered their newborn baby inside a Pennsylvania hospital’s maternity ward.<\/p>\n

It happened May 2 at Tower Health Reading Hospital.<\/p>\n

That’s where Kevin Canaan, 28 of Reading, Pennsylvania and Yeniffer Tavarez-Cepeda, 25 of New York, were spending time with their seemingly healthy one-day-old infant inside a private recovery room.<\/p>\n

\"Cepeda<\/p>\n

Berks County, Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Office<\/p>\n

Cepeda and Canaan (Left to Right)<\/p>\n

Suddenly the newborn began experiencing medical distress, and died a day later.<\/p>\n

Doctors suggested the baby’s death was due to physical abuse.<\/p>\n

An autopsy later confirmed those suspicions, revealing the baby suffered traumatic internal injuries.<\/p>\n

As result, the infant’s death was ruled a homicide.<\/p>\n

Investigators determined Canaan and Cepeda were the only people in the room with the baby at the time.<\/p>\n

“Repeated wellness checks of the infant by medical personnel allowed investigators to conclude that said injuries were inflicted within a short, well documented timeframe,” the Berks County, Pennsylvania Sheriff’s Office said in a release. “In addition, the investigation determined that both defendant\u2019s observed the infant to be in medical distress yet failed to alert any of the hospital staff.”<\/p>\n

Both parents were charged on May 19 with criminal homicide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 A mother and father allegedly murdered their newborn baby inside a Pennsylvania hospital’s maternity ward.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[88190,1056,40877,88191,88192,88193,87548,88194,736,128,130,129,88195],"class_list":["post-198871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-baby-boy-tavarez-cepeda","tag-berks-county-district-attorney","tag-berks-county-sheriffs-office","tag-berks-county-sheriffs-central-processing-center","tag-dauphin-county-forensic-center","tag-forensic-pathologist-dr-wayne-k-ross","tag-kevin-canaan","tag-magisterial-district-judge-steven-m-chieffo","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-ryan-dickstein-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}