Man arrested for feeding someone else’s baby on hospital ward

‘While the exact motive remains unclear, detectives did determine that there was no intent to cause the infant harm,’ police say

A man has been arrested after he reportedly walked into the neonatal ward of a hospital and bottle-fed someone else’s baby, police said.

Des Moines Police said in a statement on Monday that “during the late evening hours of December 28, 2021, the person recorded on surveillance video ... snuck into a secure area of a local hospital, misrepresented himself as a child’s father, and then bottle-fed the infant, before leaving. The child was not harmed”.

Adam Wedig, 36, has been arrested and charged with two counts of criminal trespassing after police determined he had no intention of harming the child.

Police added that Wedig “will be booked into the Polk County Jail on those charges, as well as an unrelated probation violation, shortly”.

Calling the incident “alarming and unsettling”, police said that the “exact motive remains unclear”.

Before the arrest, when the story was first reported by KCCI, Sergeant Paul Parizek of the Des Moines Police Department said that “the first question that comes to our minds is ‘why?’”

“The family is obviously very frightened. This is something that would startle any parent,” he added.

“This is definitely something new to all of us,” Sgt Parizek said. “When we think of child-stealing or predators this is not how they behave, or at least how we’re familiar with them behaving. In this case, there was no harm done to the child and on the surface, no intent to commit any other crime beyond what he did to get in there.”

“I would think there would be some precaution in place to reasonably ensure the person wanting access to the NICU is authorised,” medical malpractice lawyer Thomas Slater told KCCI last month.

The hospital, MercyOne medical center, said in a statement that the incident is “extremely troubling”.

They added that in addition to working with police, they have “conducted an internal investigation into the matter, which prompted several changes to our policies and protocols to expand our security and prevent this from occurring in the future”.

It’s unclear if Wedig has retained an attorney to speak on his behalf.