David and Meredith Nastasi have filed a negligence lawsuit in Pennsylvania against home health care provider Team Select Home Care and nurse Cindy Desser, accusing her of abusing their medically fragile 3-year-old daughter Z.N. The suit alleges Desser slammed the girl into her crib and withheld her breathing tube while she gasped for air. Team Select ignored the parents' prior complaints about the nurse, according to the filing.
On the night of May 25, Cindy Desser, a 58-year-old nurse assigned by Lincoln Healthcare Services LLC, doing business as Team Select Home Care, allegedly repeatedly choke-slammed Z.N. into her crib with enough force to rattle it and knock over medical equipment, the lawsuit states. Z.N., born in October 2023 at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with severe congenital issues including a missing left lung and abdominal muscles, requires round-the-clock ventilator care after nine months in the hospital and six surgeries before returning home in late 2024. Surveillance footage captured Desser slapping and aggressively throwing the toddler, and delaying replacement of her tracheostomy tube after it was pulled out, saying 'you did this' as the girl gasped for air, per a probable cause affidavit cited in prior reports by Law&Crime and WPVI.