AEGiS-UPI: Son injected with HIV

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Son injected with HIV

United Press International; Thursday April 23 10:38 AM EDT

ST. LOUIS, April 23 (UPI) _ A medical worker is charged with allegedly injecting his 11-month-old son with a syringe full of HIV- tainted blood. Police say the man, who questioned whether he was really the child's father, didn't want to pay child support. Tests later proved he was the father.

The child, now 7, is being treated for full-blown AIDS. His father, Brian Stewart, of Columbia, Ill., was charged Wednesday with first- degree assault. Prosecutors say the boy received the tainted blood in 1992 while he was being treated for respiratory problems at St. Joseph Hospital-West in Lake Saint Louis, Mo.

At the time, Stewart worked as phlebotomist _ a person who draws blood _ at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis.

The boy was tested for HIV in May 1996 and diagnosed with full-blown AIDS a short while later.

The boy's mother told investigators that Stewart had told her not to bother asking him for child support because the child wouldn't live very long. After a two-year investigation, officers with the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department arrested Stewart Tuesday in the parking lot of a St. Louis University outpatient center, where he worked as a medical assistant.

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