{"id":377515,"date":"2026-07-18T01:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T01:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/377515\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T01:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T01:38:10","slug":"unsafe-medication-practices-found-at-fort-worth-dental-office-where-child-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/377515\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsafe medication practices found at Fort Worth dental office where child died"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Search \"Search Search warrant executed on Texas dental office<\/a> <\/p>\n

48-year-old Chrishelle Hemphill was arrested on July 15 and charged with injury to a child \u2014 serious bodily injury.\u00a0Investigators determined Hemphill was responsible for the April death of 4-year-old Aithana Arriaga at Cuddle Kids Dental in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n

FORT WORTH, Texas – A search of the dental office where a child died this past April revealed an office that didn’t follow mandatory safety practices.<\/p>\n

What’s New:<\/p>\n

Detectives who searched Cuddle Kids Dental Care in Fort Worth found syringes with varying levels of leftover medication located in a box in the office.<\/p>\n

48-year-old Chrishelle Hemphill, who was arrested this week after 4-year-old Aithana Arriaga died at the office in April, told investigators the office would reuse medication from a previous dose if the entire medication wasn’t used.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Hemphill’s dental license was temporarily suspended on July 15, the day of her arrest, by the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners.<\/p>\n

The suspension order states chloral hydrate, a discontinued sedative that has no specific reversal agent, was administered to Arriaga.<\/p>\n

Child death at dentist’s office <\/p>\n

The backstory:<\/p>\n

Investigators determined Hemphill was responsible for the April death of 4-year-old Aithana Arriaga at Cuddle Kids Dental in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n

An arrest affidavit states Arriaga did not wake up following a procedure on her tongue performed by Hemphill on Apr. 1. The victim’s mother told police she felt rushed to sign documents for the procedure by Hemphill.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

According to the affidavit, Hemphill encouraged Aithana to drink a clear liquid medicine before the surgery. An unusually high amount of meperidine (demerol, an opiate) was found in the child’s blood system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A medical examiner said the amount in the child’s system would have been toxic for an adult.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Investigators also found Hemphill failed to properly address signs of respiratory distress, and gave the victim improper medication to address an opiate overdose.<\/p>\n

The affidavit states Hemphill held a popsicle up to Arriaga’s lips when the child’s head fell backwards. A temp dentist assisted with CPR before the child was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.<\/p>\n

Hemphill used an AED to check the child’s pulse after finding the victim unresponsive, despite Arriaga having a pulse. Flumazenil was also found in Arriaga’s sytem to counteract the meperidine overdose, when Narcan should have been administered.<\/p>\n

“Should have never happened” <\/p>\n

What they’re saying:<\/p>\n

“This catastrophic event should have never happened.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Robert Morgan, a board-certified pediatric dentist, tells FOX 4’s Lori Brown that Hemphill did not follow proper procedure in disposing of medication.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just thrown away. We have to have a witness showing that that’s the unused meperidine,” Morgan said. “It has to be wasted in the view of at least two people. So there is no chance for a reuse or for an error or, quite frankly, abuse.”<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Morgan was surprised that neither Hemphill or the assistant recognized the signs of respiratory distress. He encourages parents to make sure the second person monitoring a dental procedure are certified with Pediatric Advanced Life Support, or PALS.<\/p>\n

“What should have been a simple rescue of an airway appears to have cost a child a life.”<\/p>\n

What’s next:<\/p>\n

Hemphill is out of jail on a $10,000 bond. Her attorney did not respond to FOX 4’s request for comment.<\/p>\n

The Source: Information in this story comes from the Fort Worth Police Department and FOX 4 reporting.<\/p>\n

Fort Worth<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Dallas Police Department<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Search warrant executed on Texas dental office 48-year-old Chrishelle Hemphill was arrested on July 15 and charged with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1046,401,116,118,117,223,1827,122,216,393],"class_list":["post-377515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-dallas-police","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-news","tag-organization","tag-tarrant-county","tag-tx","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}