Couple Charged in Baby’s Death From Drinking Acid

A suburban couple were ordered held on $1-million bond each on Thursday after they were charged with the murder of the infant son they had once claimed was the victim of acid-tainted baby formula.

Authorities said they would seek the death penalty for Shelia Smith, 26, and Ricky Irby Sr., 29, both of North Chicago, Ill., near the Wisconsin border. A grand jury indictment charged the pair with forcing their 3-month-old son Quentin to swallow sulfuric acid in 1984.

The child lost a lung and suffered severe burns on his mouth, throat and stomach, but lingered in a hospital in critical condition and tied to a breathing device for two years before he died.

The case set off a brief product tampering scare when Smith and Irby told police that the youngster had been poisoned after swallowing a prepared formula known as Similac with Iron. Irby later filed a negligence suit against Abbott Laboratories, the makers of Similac, as well as the grocery store where he claimed to have bought the formula. But he dropped the suit without explanation last year.

Prime Suspects

Matthew Chancey, the Lake County prosecutor handling the case, said police never really believed Smith and Irby, who were always the prime suspects. But Chancey said the original investigation was thwarted when a state laboratory accidentally destroyed crucial evidence, including cans of formula, a baby bottle, and a nipple.

The investigation was reopened after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last November in an Arizona case that experts could be allowed to testify about key evidence in a criminal prosecution even if the evidence itself had been accidentally lost.

Chancey said he doubted Irby filed the legal action against Abbott to throw investigators off the trail, but he refused to speculate on why the couple allegedly tried to kill their son or whether they hoped to profit from his death with a product liability suit.

The poisoning took place less than two years after a bizarre, still unsolved series of incidents in which several Chicago area residents died from taking cyanide-laced Tylenol tablets they had purchased at local drugstores. That scare prompted a massive, nationwide recall of Tylenol.

Samples Tested

In the case of the Irby youth, however, investigators quickly tested samples of Similac and ruled out the need for a recall. “It became fairly obvious early on that there wasn’t anything wrong with the formula,” said Chancey. “ . . . And in order for it to have been tampered with at the store it would have been detectable. The only openings in the can were where they were opened after purchase to pour the contents into a bottle.”

Cathy Babington, a spokesperson for Abbott, which is also headquartered in North Chicago, said the company had received no other complaints and determined through its own internal checks that nothing was wrong with the formula. “We don’t really have a statement,” Babington said after the indictments were handed down. “Its a real sad situation.”

Lake County Associate Judge Harry Hartel set an arraignment in the case for June 7. Both Smith and Irby were being held in the county jail.

Chancey said the couple, who had never been married, were no longer living together at the time of their arrest on Wednesday. He said they also had another son, 8-year-old Ricky Irby Jr., who was believed to be living with his maternal grandmother.

Shortly after the poisoning, prosecutors charged both Smith and Irby with child abuse and a juvenile court judge awarded temporary custody of both Quentin and Ricky Jr. to a state child care agency. However, the juvenile case was dropped after the evidence in the criminal investigation was lost and the parents regained custody.