Photograph by way of Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Workplace
An Oklahoma pediatrician is accused of staging the dying of her 4-year-old daughter to make it seem the kid drowned within the swimming pool at their rental trip house in Florida, detectives say.
Dr. Neha Gupta, 36, was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail in Oklahoma Metropolis on Tuesday. She is accused of first-degree homicide in Miami-Dade County, an arrest warrant states.
Staged unintended drowning
The backstory:
On June 27, Gupta referred to as 911 at about 4:30 a.m. to report that her daughter, Aria Talathi, 4, had drowned of their pool.
Officers with the El Portal Police Division and paramedics with Miami-Dade Fireplace Rescue responded to the scene and tried CPR. Aria was ultimately transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital, the place she was pronounced useless, in accordance with a native information media report.
Gupta instructed investigators that she was sleeping along with her daughter at their Airbnb rental house when she heard a noise round 3:20 a.m. She observed that the sliding-glass door within the bed room, which led to the out of doors patio, was open.
That’s when she found Aria.
Gupta stated she tried to avoid wasting the lady, however instructed the detective that she does not know the right way to swim and was unable to get Aria out of the water.
No water in Aria’s lungs or abdomen
Dig deeper:
A health care provider who carried out an post-mortem on the medical expert’s workplace didn’t discover water within the kid’s lungs or abdomen, and that “primarily based on these findings she was in a position to rule out drowning as being the reason for dying,” the detective wrote. Dr. Tuyet Tran additionally suggested authorities that she believes the kid was useless earlier than being positioned within the pool, the detective wrote.
The trigger and method of dying are pending, however Tran discovered accidents corresponding to bruising throughout the lady’s cheeks. Tran’s preliminary findings are that these accidents “are according to asphyxiation by smothering,” the affidavit states.
Police haven’t revealed any potential motive within the case.
The detective famous within the affidavit that Gupta’s ex-husband instructed detectives that he and his ex-wife are concerned in an ongoing custody battle over the lady.
The ex-husband additionally instructed detectives that he was unaware that Gupta and the kid had traveled to South Florida. Primarily based on surveillance video and Airbnb information, investigators decided that Gupta and her daughter have been the only real occupants of the rental unit, the affidavit states.
The College of Oklahoma and its well being system launched an announcement this week saying that Gupta has been “suspended from affected person care, given discover of termination, and was now not seeing sufferers on the well being system as of Could 30, 2025.”
Gupta has additionally been given a “discover of termination” by the college, the assertion stated.
The opposite facet:
Richard Cooper, Gupta’s lawyer, stated he and Gupta cooperated with authorities by telling their account of what occurred and have been shocked when the first-degree homicide cost was introduced. The physician, he stated, is a sufferer of a horrible tragedy.
What they’re saying:
“Nobody thought in 1,000,000 years that she can be charged with homicide,” Cooper stated in an interview.
Cooper stated he visited the house after the kid’s dying and located the latch to the sliding-glass door to be so simply opened that he was in a position to take action together with his pinky finger.
“Her story made sense to me,” he stated. “It matched up. She voluntarily gave a number of statements with me to the police, and so they have been at all times constant.”
What’s subsequent:
Gupta is jailed with out bond, and Florida authorities are in search of her return to Miami to face the homicide cost.
The Supply: Data for this text was taken from reporting by WSVN and THe Related Press. This story was reported from Los Angeles.
