An Idaho couple had their worst nightmare realized in February when their newborn baby died without explanation.
Diamond and Alexis Cooley recalled the horrific moment they found their baby son Onyxx lifeless – and the gut-wrenching quest for answers that came after.
Alexis told the Idaho Statesman she found her baby on his back – as she had left him sleeping the night before – with a half-inch of yellowish-white, bloodied foam coming from his mouth.
The parents – who are separated and share joint custody of their three sons, Jasper, Stohne, and Onyxx – still don’t know exactly how their son died, since they never got a full investigation.
Bonneville County coroner Rick Taylor, 68, who works part-time on a salary of $95,928, filed away the cause as a mystery without conducting a thorough probe – highlighting a loophole in wider state legislation.
Taylor would later go on to announce his resignation on November 8 – effective December 28.
The nightmare began for the Cooley family on February 1, when Alexis woke around 6:10 am at her home in a sleepy farming community of Shelley, close to Idaho Falls, to find her youngest child cold and lifeless.
In a fit of desperation, she tried to clear his airway with her finger before using the Heimlich maneuver she learned from a training course.
When these attempts failed, she ran upstairs with Onyxx in tow while screaming for help from her parents, whom she lives with in Shelley.
She frantically called 911 before giving the phone to her mother while trying to save her baby boy’s life.
Alexis then called Diamond, who lives around 20 minutes away in Idaho Falls.
Leaping into action, Diamond got in his truck and made it to the Shelley home just in time to see his son disappear into the back of an ambulance.
The family followed behind in his pickup to the emergency room of Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, where records show they arrived at 6:43 am.
A doctor delivered the devastating news that Onyxx had died just two minutes after their arrival, and medics gave a preliminary diagnosis of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.
Onyxx was born with a cleft lip, which led to some complications, including him being unable to breastfeed and choking on spit-up a couple of times after being placed on his back.
But he was otherwise a calm, easy child to raise, his parents said – he rarely cried and loved his older brothers.
Since he was otherwise healthy and the hospital diagnosis was not certain, a coroner was recruited to aid the Cooley’s quest for answers.
But Bonneville County coroner Taylor simply ruled the death a mystery, and did not investigate properly what led to the tragedy.
He did not ask the Cooleys what happened in the days before Onyxx died, or visit the scene – or even order an autopsy as national guidelines outlined.
Taylor was able to do this because Idaho law does not require elected county coroners to follow national standards for death investigations.
This differs from most states, which have professional boards that write regulations for coroners, with many requiring them to conduct full autopsies for unexplained child deaths.
In Idaho, one of the few requirements is attending ‘coroner’s school’ within a year of taking office and 24 hours of training every two years after that.
And there’s no punishment for failing to do the bare minimum; records show that Taylor didn’t come close to hitting 24 hours of training since 2018, the Idaho Statesman reported.
As a result, the death of a child who passes away in the state outside of a doctor’s care is more likely to go uninvestigated than anywhere else in the United States.
A review by the state’s Office of Performance Evaluations this year found 49 percent of those deaths with unnatural or unknown causes were autopsied in Idaho from 2018 until 2022 – compared with the national average of 79 percent.
In Bonneville County, the stats are even more dire – with Taylor ordering autopsies in only 33 percent of the 39 child deaths whose causes were unnatural or unknown.
Taylor’s alleged inadequacies were aired by Rich Riffle, the Ada County coroner, which conducts autopsies under contract with 30 other county coroners in the state, including Bonneville.
He penned a letter in January to the Bonneville County board of commissioners saying there were ‘multiple issues’ with Taylor’s death investigations.
The office ‘consistently furnishes inadequate information’ ahead of autopsies,’ according to Riffle, adding that Taylor often sent over ‘mere summaries of the case, sometimes just a few sentences on homicide cases.’
Taylor hit back by saying his reports were short because he didn’t see the point of duplicating the work of police, adding that Riffle had been ‘real hard to work with since he got elected’, per the Idaho Statesman.
However, in his resignation letter, Taylor wrote, ‘It’s getting to be a lot busier than it ever has been with the increase in the population. I’m considered a part-time employee, but it will become a full-time position with the next coroner, and I don’t have that time to commit to it.’