‘I trusted them’: Family heartbroken after 6-month-old baby dies at Winnipeg Children’s Hospital

Lu Teng approaches the living room window, where his child peers out, looking for a sign of his father waving back.

Now when Lou returns from work, his boy – named Luca, which means shine – is no longer there.

He said of the health care system, “I trusted them with everything, but right now in my mind, I think they killed Luca.

“It’s not any particular person — the whole system, the hospital.”

Lu took her six-month-old son to the Children’s Hospital of Winnipeg in mid-January, believing the emergency department was the right place to help her child. Ten hours later, her baby was taken into surgery and died.

Luca had to wait for hours in the children’s hospital when an X-ray showed a hole in his esophagus.

However, health officials told the family that the response was timely based on what they knew about the boy’s condition.

Luca was born last July Esophageal atresia, a condition in which the esophagus and stomach are not connected.

He underwent complex but successful surgery two days after his birth and returned to the hospital on January 12 for what had become a routine procedure. Dilation, which widened narrow areas of his esophagus to make swallowing food easier.

Luca had endured this process seven times before, but this was different: His father said he later choked while feeding him.

“I told the nurse, ‘This is unusual,'” he said.

But his son was still discharged.

taken back to hospital

Luca returned home, was fed again and the problems continued. He was not stopping coughing. He had no bowel movements.

His parents thought something was wrong, and Luca was taken back to Children’s Hospital around 6 p.m.

After 30 minutes, Lu said he asked the medical staff if he could feed Luca again and was given permission.

An hour later, an X-ray was taken of Luca that showed a hole in his esophagus, likely caused by dilation, a doctor later told the family.

A pediatrician who was not involved in Luca’s care said rupture is the main risk with dilation.

Often the hole heals on its own, but sometimes it doesn’t, said Dr. Cherif Emile, who practices at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.

“Saliva is leaking into the chest. The baby may be very unstable and may need emergency surgery.”

Lu said he was not alarmed by the hole, as his son was already in the hospital, although he expressed concern to the staff as time passed and his son, still crying, remained in the emergency department.

The father said nurses repeatedly entered the room to silence the heart rate monitor, sometimes reaching 200 beats per minute, as the alarm went off.

Lu’s mother worked as a health care assistant in China and came to Canada on a visitor visa to care for Luca.

“She kept telling me Vital was not well. Tell the doctor,” he said, but he told his mother not to worry — Luca spent the first four months of his life in the same hospital’s care.

“Everyone would do everything they could to help him,” she remembers saying.

However, Lou’s confidence is shaken around 4 a.m. when Luca is suddenly taken into surgery and tubes are inserted into his chest.

Some time later, a surgeon asked Lou if he could open Luca’s chest in a last-ditch effort to save his life. Luca did not survive the surgery.

“His mother almost fell to the floor and I had to hold my wife, my mother,” he said of the moment he learned he would be leaving the hospital without his only child.

“I cry, but I don’t have the strength to say anything.”

troubled with guilt

Lu says he feels numb, and he is plagued with guilt for trusting the hospital, for bringing his family to Canada three years ago, for rejecting his father-in-law’s suggestion months earlier that Luca be sent to China to ensure proper medical care, and for asking his wife to go home the night before so she could rest to care for Luca while he worked the next day.

He blames his family members and himself.

“In my 32 years of life, I have always thought that emergency is a place where you send the patient, they take care of it immediately,” he said.

But at the children’s hospital, they “let us wait.”

The tragedy marks at least the third death of a patient at a Winnipeg hospital in three months, as families say waits for care were too long. The province confirmed each death is being investigated as a serious incident.

The opposition Progressive Conservatives are demanding a public inquiry into the deaths. Health critic Kathleen Cook said reviews of serious incidents are internal and have no accountability to the public.

“This family deserves answers about what specifically happened to their son, and Manitobans deserve answers about what is happening in our emergency rooms and why people are dying waiting for care,” he said.

The average wait time in Winnipeg hospitals and urgent care centers reached 4.1 hours in December 2025, the longest wait in more than 10 years, according to monthly data from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara shrugged off Tory calls for a public inquiry, saying a critical incident review is enough to uncover what happened and determine if any lessons need to be learned.

The minister said he was informed that Luca received care “in a timely and appropriate manner”, but he would not dispute the experience of the family, who felt differently.

Asagwara said, “I think it’s really important for us not to doubt the families or question the families. Our job is to listen, understand and give them the answers they need.”

Luca’s father and mother met with health officials on Monday.

The family said officials told them they followed protocol for a child with a hole in the esophagus, noting that tears often heal on their own. When they realized he was having trouble breathing, they gave Luca antibiotics and opted for surgery.

The family was also told that the hospital staff wanted to admit Luca to another ward at night, but there were no beds available.

Lu said many of the family’s other questions cannot be answered until a critical incident review and autopsy are completed.

Luca was also born with a patent ductus arteriosus, a hole in his heart between the pulmonary artery and aorta, but Lou was told at first that he didn’t need to worry about it.

Meetings with hospital officials did not ease his pain, he said, and he still says medical staff did not act fast enough, pointing to the constant beeping of the heart rate monitor as an example.

On a recent morning, memories of Luca are everywhere in the family’s Transcona apartment — from unused diapers to the play mat he used to spend hours on — but his photos and most of his clothes have been packed away, because his parents can’t bear the reminder.

Luca’s mother, Yaqi Zhang, kneels beside her son’s crib, where his favorite toys and the last outfit he wore are carefully laid out.

“I take many pictures and videos (of Luca) every day, but on the last day I had nothing,” she says, crying.

Lu says his wife and mother sometimes look out the window when he returns from work, but not always.

There are memories he doesn’t want to tarnish.

She remembers Luca tilting her head so she could rub it gently, or Luca rubbing one of her ears, a habit she learned from her father.

“After she was born,” Lu said, wiping tears from her eyes, “she gave me everything.”