Bunglers and disgraceful

Best describes most of the participants in this story. Parents give their three-month old daughter Vodka mixed in with baby formula killing the child. This kind of stupidity angers me enough. Then Fort Lauderdale police never bother to arrest the couple for 16 months after being told it was a homicide. I don't buy the language barrier bs either being given. With as big a Haitian population down here as there is, this isn't the first case the FTL police had with Creole speakers. Someone screwed up big time and now Mardala Derival and Mackenson Dantus are fugitives.

Open Post- Don Surber, Jo's Cafe, Basil's Blog, Bright & Early

Fort Lauderdale -- It took nearly two years to issue an arrest warrant in the case of two parents accused of killing their 3-month-old child using formula mixed with vodka.

It may have taken so long, in part, because infant deaths from alcohol poisoning are highly unusual, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"I don't know of any cases like this in our city that I'm aware of," said Detective Katherine Collins, the Fort Lauderdale Police spokeswoman. "This is pretty bad."

Mardala Derival, 22, and Mackenson Dantus, 25, are fugitives charged with aggravated manslaughter in connection with the death of their child, Makeisha Dantus, in February 2004. A warrant for their arrest was issued Oct. 20.

Makeisha's blood-alcohol level, 0.47, was enough to kill an adult, toxicologists say. It would take a shot of vodka, or 35 ml, to immediately cause the same toxicity level in the 9.5-pound, 22-inch baby, assistant medical examiner Dr. Altaf Hossain said in a report.

On Tuesday, Dr. Josh Perper, the Broward County medical examiner, said the case is unusual.

"I don't remember a case like this in the past 11 years in Broward County," Perper said. "Children are very sensitive to alcohol, they can die at very low levels."

In April 2004, the medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide, but it took prosecutors more than a year to issue the arrest warrant. Collins said investigators kept track of the couple until they moved in August 2005.

The FBI's Fugitive Apprehension Task Force is among the agencies searching for the couple, she said.

Other delaying factors came into play as investigators looked into the baby's death, including a language barrier, other agencies' participation and difficulty locating witnesses, Collins said. She declined to elaborate.

"We cannot ethically file charges unless there is adequate evidence," said Howard Scheinberg, a prosecutor in the Broward State Attorney's homicide division. "When we get a case like this, we'll continue to investigate and seek out more.

"Evidence continued to develop up until the time of the warrant," Scheinberg said. "Until Oct. 20 we felt it was more appropriate to continue investigating."

Andrea Moore, executive director of Florida's Children First, a statewide advocacy organization for children based in Coral Springs, said the Broward State Attorney's Office usually moves quickly on cases of suspected child abuse.

"This is not typical for them, so there must be a good reason," Moore said. "It's very unusual."

Makeisha was declared dead at her parents' apartment at 831 NE 14th Court on Valentine's Day 2004. The parents told police she had suffered from a fever, oral thrush, vomiting and diarrhea for three days, the medical examiner's report states.

To calm the child, the parents gave her Tylenol for the fever, sugar water mixed with vodka and baby formula also mixed with vodka, Hossain said in the medical examiner's report. The child was not seen by a physician, he stated.