Former “American Idol” contestant Syesha Mercado received a little joy this week after she was reunited with her newborn daughter, Ast. Mercado posted an Instagram Live last week showing Manatee County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies surrounding her car and insisting that she surrender her days-old baby in a surprise welfare check. The child was taken because the couple did not inform authorities that Mercado had given birth while she was in the midst of a legal battle over custody of her first child. The baby had just gone for a checkup the day before, the couple explained in the video, where she received a clean bill of health.
Mercado and her partner and children’s father Tyron Deener have been in a fight with authorities to regain custody of their toddler son after he was unexpectedly placed in foster care earlier this year. The couple took to IG to share the update.
“We want to say thank you. We still got work to [do to] get Rah back. But because of y’all and my family we’ve had the proper support to get the best attorneys in the country to be able to bring justice,” Deener said.
“Ast is back. We still gotta get Ra back,” Mercado posted in a video caption.
The couple’s troubles initially began in February when they took their one-year-old son, Amen’Ra, to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, for dehydration. He was struggling with the transition from breast milk to solid foods, according to We Have the Right to Be Right, an activist group campaigning for Mercado. While there, the group stated that, Amen’Ra was assessed by Dr. Sally Smith, a physician who was the subject of a USA Today Network investigation after being accused of rushing to judgment to charge caregivers of abusing children, something Smith denied to USA Today Network.
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