John Jefferson
Left: Marcus Maddela (Bucks County DA’s Office). Right: Courtney Soyka (Bucks County DA’s Office).
A couple in Pennsylvania have been arrested after they allegedly fed their prematurely born twins so little that the infants were “dangerously malnourished,” with each gaining only five pounds a month after their birth.
Courtney Soyka, 32, and Marcus Maddela, 45, of Bristol Township, were taken into custody earlier this week and charged with two counts each of felony child endangerment and conspiracy, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office, the investigation into the couple began in December 2024, when the Bucks County Township Police Department received a referral from the Department of Children and Youth regarding newborn twins who had been born about two months premature.
The children were born on Oct. 7, 2024, and weighed only 4.1 and 3.7 pounds. Due to their low weights, both infants remained in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for treatment and observation until doctors deemed them healthy enough to be released to the parents.
However, in the weeks that followed, the twins missed four scheduled medical appointments that were meant to check their weight and ensure they were remaining healthy without full-time care.
Soyka on Dec. 11 brought the children back to the hospital where medical personnel said they appeared “extremely underweight for their age.”
“When the baby’s returned to the hospital, each one was under the first percentile for their age,” the release states. “The twins were immediately taken to St. Christopher’s Hospital in Philadelphia. After three days of care, the twins were able to gain weight at a much higher average at the hospital than when they were with their parents.”
A doctor at the hospital said the fact that the twins were able to gain weight so quickly at the hospital without their parents indicated the issues were “consistent with insufficient caloric intake at home,” according to the release.
One of the doctors who treated the child allegedly told authorities that both twins presented with “very poor weight gain” despite showing no symptoms of being ill. Further evidence the infants had been mistreated came as their conditions “improved significantly” with nothing more than routine formula feedings during their stay at the hospital, officials said.
The same doctor added that the children’s problematic weight gain “could have been addressed sooner if the twins had been taken top their follow-up appointments with their pediatrician as scheduled.”
Following their arrests, Soyka and Maddela were transported and processed at the Bucks County Correctional Facility. They made their first court appearance in front of Magisterial District Judge Terrance Hughes this week who set their bonds at $500,000.
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