Family Seeks Answers on Baby’s Death – Threatened Arrest for Trying to Record Last Moments of Life
The Rivenburgs were not ready to say goodbye to Baby Steffen. On the morning of his death, Steffen's parents and grandparents were in court pleading for his life, but their cries were drowned out by the voices of others who literally argued for his death. The events surrounding Baby Steffen's death on Thursday afternoon, June 8, are disturbing, and the family wants answers. The prayer of thousands of people around the world was that Baby Steffen's heart would beat and that he would breathe when doctors at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt removed him from the ECMO machine. According to Lisa Rivenburg, that is exactly what happened. "His heart was beating!" But she says that the doctors didn't give him the option of surviving. A doctor told the family that his heart wouldn't beat for long, so they wanted to give him painkillers "to relax him." Just a short time before he was removed from life support, Baby Steffen was kicking his feet and moving his arms in response to his family. While his parents still pleaded for his life and for time with their baby, Lisa tried to record her grandson's final moments. She reports that a Vanderbilt police officer told her to stop recording: "I'm getting ready to arrest you." She said that he started to reach for something. She didn't know whether he was reaching for his handcuffs or gun or something else, but she stopped recording. Grandma did not get her phone back until she was seated in her car. She and the baby's parents were escorted under armed guard out of the hospital. "We were treated like criminals!"