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Did Hospital Screw-Up Kill Smith's Son?

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MAMA'S BOY Daniel and Anna Nicole Smith
Did Anna Nicole Smith's son die due to medical negligence? A hospital employee told reporters at the Nassau Guardian that 20-year-old Daniel Wayne Smith passed away after the medical staff at Doctor's Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas, couldn't locate the proper oxygen supply needed to resuscitate him. Smith died while visiting his stripper-turned-spokesmodel mother at the hospital, where she had given birth three days earlier, reportedly via caesarean, to a baby daughter. At a press conference commemorating the fifth anniversary of 9/11 Monday, Prime Minister Perry Christie said Anna Nicole had been granted permanent residency in the Bahamas just last week, and recently bought a home on Nassau's posh Eastern Road.

The hospital's CEO, Barry Rassin, strongly denied the negligence allegations in an interview with Radar, saying that the hospital is pursuing legal action against the Nassau Guardian, which reported the anonymously sourced story on Tuesday. "Standard procedure was followed at all times," says Rassin.

According to the paper, Daniel was vomiting uncontrollably before he collapsed and died, sending his mother into a "violent rage" as she wrestled with hospital workers to get closer to her son. "All we know right now is that he was on anti-depressants," the source says. "Some things indicate that he probably overdosed on those drugs."

By the time it was all over, the room "was a total mess" splattered with blood and vomit, and Smith's son, who she gave birth to at age 18, was dead.

In a statement, Michele Rassin, the hospital's VP of operations, insisted that his medical team used Advanced Life Support protocol—which includes the administration of oxygen to the patient—for 22 minutes in a vain attempt to resuscitate Smith. He was pronounced dead at 10:05 a.m. Sunday. Nassau's medical coroner, Linda P. Virgill, told the Associated Press that Smith did not die from natural causes, but she declined to comment on reports that he overdosed on antidepressants, saying that an autopsy and toxicological report would be released Friday.

The 38-year-old Smith has not been seen in public since Sunday but is believed to still be in the Bahamas. Daniel's father, Billy Smith, told Extra he had not seen his son since Daniel was two years-old and last spoke to his ex-wife in 1996.

"It's so sad. I hated that it happened. He was so young. I'm sort of in shock right now," he said.

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