LANCASTER : Man Who Alleged Nurses Hurt His Baby Is Arrested

A man who claimed that nurses at a Lancaster hospital injured his newborn daughter because she is black has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly filing a false report to pave the way for a lawsuit.

Jerry Eugene Lucas, 43, of Rosamond was arrested on charges of making a false statement to a federal agency, Gary G. Auer, who supervises the FBI’s Lancaster office, said Monday. Lucas was being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles pending a bail hearing Thursday.

The arrest stemmed from a civil rights complaint that Lucas filed Oct. 13 at the FBI’s Los Angeles office, Auer said. In that complaint, Lucas alleged that nurses at Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center had harmed his daughter at the time of her birth one month earlier.

Lucas told authorities that the child received bruises, a swollen eye and fingernail marks on her body during her stay at the hospital. The staff at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles found that the baby had a broken collarbone, the FBI supervisor said.

When investigators reviewed Antelope Valley Hospital records, however, they showed that the child had been released in good health on Sept. 26. Lucas later admitted that his daughter had been hurt in a household accident, and that he had filed the civil rights complaint “in an effort to support an anticipated lawsuit,” Auer said.