A Tarrant County woman has been arrested for felony injury to a child after providing false medical history for her child in order to obtain numerous unnecessary medical tests and procedures including a tongue tie and a spinal tap.
Sarah Meglar, 22, of Fort Worth, was arrested on Aug. 3.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, detectives first became aware of Meglar's behavior when she brought her child, a male less than a year old, to Cook Children’s Medical Center in March 2021.
Court documents state that Meglar complained that her child would not eat and was dehydrated. Investigators said the child was obviously overweight, but in light of Meglar's complaints, a nasal gastric tube was placed in the child.
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Meglar and her child were then taken to a covert video surveillance room where doctors observed her feeding the child with a bottle provided by doctors, refilling the bottle with formula, and reporting to nurses that the child would not take the bottle, court documents state.
Meglar later posted on Facebook that her child may get a gastrostomy-jejunostomy tube, but doctors confirmed that the victim had never had a gastroenterology consultation.
According to the affidavit, Meglar also claimed in a Facebook post that her son had Down syndrome, though doctors confirmed that no Down syndrome testing had ever been done on the child.
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Court documents show that Meglar created numerous posts regarding the health of her child, which investigators deemed to be attention seeking in nature.
In a separate hospital visit, Meglar told doctors that her child was diagnosed with low muscle tone at birth which affected his feeding. She also claimed that her child had to have surgery on his tongue to have it clipped and that he failed a hearing test in his right ear. Court documents show that she went on to claim that her child had jaundice, tremors, cyanosis, and patent ductus arteriosus, which she described as a hole in his heart.
Doctors also said that despite her claims that her child was having significant feeding issues, the child was the appropriate weight and height for his age, according to the affidavit.
In October and November 2020, Meglar brought her child to the hospital claiming that he had sepsis. Court documents state that one of these visits involved an unnecessary spinal tap that caused a victim physical pain.
Doctor said that they did not see symptoms relating to sepsis when the spinal tap was conducted, according to the affidavit.
Detectives said that several individuals close to Meglar claimed that she was making up conditions about her son and her four-year-old daughter Paisley in order to get attention.
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Meglar's bond will be set by a magistrate.
