{"id":261198,"date":"2026-08-07T20:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/261198\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:10:13","slug":"parents-held-in-death-of-newborn-in-berks-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/261198\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents held in death of newborn in Berks hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This story was updated to correct the name of the presiding district judge.<\/p>\n

A Reading man and New York woman will face further court action on criminal homicide and related charges in the death<\/a> of their day-old son who police say was fatally injured while the parents were alone with him in Reading Hospital.<\/p>\n

Kevin Canaan, 28, and Yeniffer Tavarez-Cepeda, 25, were held for court following a preliminary hearing Wednesday before District Judge David Yoch.<\/p>\n

Canaan and Tavarez-Cepeda were returned to Berks County Jail where they are being held without bail. They are also charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.<\/p>\n

Berks County detectives filed the charges<\/a> with West Reading police following an investigation.<\/p>\n

According to investigators:<\/p>\n

On May 2, 2025 at 10:45 a.m., a maternity nurse at Reading Hospital checked on they baby who had been born about 10 hours earlier.<\/p>\n

She told investigators the infant showed no signs of medical distress but she was troubled by the father\u2019s behavior and reported her concerns to hospital staff.<\/p>\n

The baby\u2019s condition had drastically changed when a social worker and a pediatrician arrived about 25 minutes later. The infant was pale and flaccid, with tiny pinpoint spots on his skin \u2014 petechiae, a form of bruising \u2014 indicating severe medical distress.<\/p>\n

A doctor noted the infant\u2019s breathing was loud and gasping, a sign of a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

The baby was taken from the room, and staff began life\u2011saving measures before transferring him to the neonatal intensive care unit.<\/p>\n

His condition worsened, and he was flown to Penn State Hershey Medical Center for advanced neonatal care.<\/p>\n

He died of his injuries the following day at Hershey. Medical personnel there told investigators the injuries were consistent with physical abuse and not a result of the birthing process.<\/p>\n

On May 5, Dr. Wayne K. Ross, a forensic pathologist, conducted an autopsy on the boy at the Dauphin County Forensic Center in Harrisburg and found that he had suffered a multitude of internal injuries. The infant was determined to have died of multiple traumatic injuries, and the death ruled a homicide.<\/p>\n

A joint investigation conducted by Berks County detectives and West Reading police determined the infant was under the supervision of Canaan and Tavarez-Cepeda in the hospital room when the injuries were inflicted.<\/p>\n

Based on the timing of wellness checks performed by medical personnel, investigators concluded the injuries were inflicted within a short, well-documented period. They determined the parents saw the infant in medical distress but did not alert hospital staff.<\/p>\n

Court documents do not specify which parent caused the injuries, but both are culpable under the law, District Attorney John T. Adams said previously.<\/p>\n

According to the documents, the pathologist said the child\u2019s chances of survival would have increased if the parents had alerted medical staff when they noticed the baby in distress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This story was updated to correct the name of the presiding district judge. A Reading man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,46,202,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-261198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-courts","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261198","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=261198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}