Source: Greg Doherty / Getty
Former American Idol contestant Syesha Mercado has been reunited with her child, Ast, who was removed from her and her partner Tyron Deener’s custody last week. Deener revealed the news in an Instagram video.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart and my family for being there for us unconditionally,” Deener said.
He added that he and Mercado are still fighting to regain custody of their one-year-old son, Amen’Ra, who was removed from their custody in March over reports of him “suffering from severe malnutrition,” the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office told People. Deener and Mercado had taken Amen’Ra to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in late February because they were concerned about malnutrition due to him rejecting other fluids once he wasn’t getting breastfed. They were later accused of turning down a B-12 intramuscular shot, which the couple denies, and he was later removed over claims of malnutrition once he was discharged from the hospital, the Miami Herald-Tribune reported.
“We still got work to do to get Ra back, but we just wanted to say thank you because of y’all … we had the proper support to get the best attorneys in the country to be able to bring justice,” Deener said.
Last week, Mercado uploaded a video of baby Ast being removed by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). In the video, the Manatee County sheriff’s deputies pull the couple over for a traffic stop to serve the couple with a court order demanding that they turn over their newborn child for a check-up. The couple said Ast, who was 10-days-old, had a check-up the day before.
“My baby is days old, and you’re taking my baby away from me,” she said to the DCF workers in the video. “You have no heart. This is so wrong.”
In a virtual press conference that took place after Ast’s removal, Mercado said DCF was depriving her of the opportunity to love her babies.
“I am a first-time mom and I’ve been deprived of holding my babies, and feeding my babies,” Mercado said. “I didn’t get to see Ra say mama for the first time. I didn’t get to see my babies meet for the first time. I didn’t get to see that and I can’t go back and redo that moment. I will never be able to go back and redo that moment.”
