A western Iowa woman faces felony charges for allegedly injecting something into her daughter’s feeding tube. Twenty-eight-year-old Valeria Shakov of Carroll has been charged with felony child abuse after video surveillance showed her injecting an unknown substance into her 19-month-old daughter’s feeding tube at an Omaha hospital.
Reports say Shakov suffers from “Munchausen syndrome by proxy,” which is a rare form of child abuse in which parents make a child ill in order to gain attention and sympathy for themselves. In an interview with police, Shakov said she was injecting formula into the feeding tube. Toxicology tests are underway to determine what the substance was. The girl has been placed in foster care.