The death of a three-year-old adopted Russian boy has been ruled an accident by US authorities, but officials said they are still investigating a case that has become a flashpoint in the debate over international adoption.
Four doctors reviewed the autopsy report and agreed on Friday that Max Shatto’s death on Jan. 21 was not intentional, Sheriff Mark Donaldson and District Attorney Bobby Bland said.
Preliminary autopsy results had indicated Max had bruises on several parts of his body, but Bland said on Friday that those bruises appeared to be self-inflicted. He also said no drugs were found in Max’s system.
“I had four doctors agree that this is the result of an accident,” he said. “We have to take that as fact.”
Alan and Laura Shatto adopted Max, born Maxim Kuzmin, and his half-brother, two-year-old Kristopher, from an orphanage in western Russia last fall.
Laura Shatto told authorities she found Max unresponsive outside their Gardendale, Texas, home while he was playing with his younger brother. The boy was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.
Russian authorities have blamed the boy’s death on his adoptive parents and used the case to justify a recently enacted ban on all US adoptions of Russian children.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has said it has opened its own investigation. It is unclear whether the committee could charge the Shatto family or force their prosecution.
The investigation into the boy’s death continues, Bland said. Once investigators complete their work, Bland will meet with them and decide whether to pursue charges such as negligent supervision or injury to a child by omission. He did not say when such a decision would be made.
The Shatto family’s attorney, Michael Brown, said that Max’s death being ruled an accident “is not a surprise to me at all.”
Three doctors from the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office in Fort Worth, which completed the autopsy, and another doctor agreed on the finding.
Brown said Max suffered from behavioral issues and occasionally butted his head on objects or other people, which is how he got bruised. He also noted that Max was taking doctor-prescribed medication to treat hyperactivity but that his parents do not believe the medication played a role in the child’s death.
No one answered the phone at the Shatto home on Friday and a sign had been posted on the driveway reading: “No Comment.”
The Russian government passed its ban on international adoptions in December last year in retaliation for a new US law targeting alleged Russian human rights violators.
The ban also reflects lingering resentment over the perceived mistreatment of some of the 60,000 children Americans have adopted during the last two decades. At least 20 of those children have died and reports of abuse have garnered attention in Russia.
Chuck Johnson, chief executive officer of the Virginia-based National Council for Adoption, said an agreement ratified last year would have prevented the conditions that led to many deaths and abuse cases. One change in particular would have required all adoptions to go through agencies licensed in Russia.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said on Friday it found no violations at the Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, the agency that processed the Shattos’ adoption.
The state’s Child Protective Services division is proceeding with a separate investigation into allegations that Max was subject to physical abuse and neglect, but has not determined whether those allegations are true.
Russian state media have featured the boys’ biological mother, Yulia Kuzmina, who lost custody over negligence and serious drinking problems. In a tightly choreographed Feb. 21 interview on state television, Kuzmina insisted Russian custody officials seized her children unfairly and said she wanted to be reunited with her other son, born Kirill Kuzmin.
She said she had given up drinking, found a job and pledged to fight to get the boy back.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees