She planned to have a smooth delivery. Now the hospital is under investigation for her death

April Valentine planned to have a complication-free delivery and to enjoy her life as a first-time parent to a healthy baby girl. Instead, California’s department of health and human services is investigating the circumstances of the Black woman’s death during childbirth at an Inglewood hospital.

Valentine, a 31-year-old Black woman, went to Centinela hospital in Inglewood on 9 January and died the next day. Her daughter Aniya was born via an emergency caesarean section. Her family and friends say that staff at the hospital ignored the pregnant woman’s complaints of pain, refused to let her doula be in the hospital room during the birth and neglected Valentine as her child’s father performed CPR on her.

“It’s hard to even sleep, to even look at my child after seeing what I saw in that hospital that night,” said Nigha Robertson, Valentine’s boyfriend and Aniya’s father, to the Los Angeles county board of supervisors during its 31 January meeting. “I’m the only one who touched her, I’m the one who did CPR. Nobody touched her, we screamed and begged for help … they just let her lay there and die.”

After her death, Robertson – along with Valentine’s family, friends and other supporters – held rallies outside the hospital to bring attention to her death and call for an investigation into why it happened. They also created the Justice 4 April Instagram page to share updates on Valentine’s case.

Valentine’s family and friends say the mother-to-be did everything she could to have a smooth and safe birth. She chose Centinela because it was a hospital where she would be under the care of a Black doctor, enlisted a doula and even created an affirmation board with messages like “I will not have any complications” and “I will have a healthy baby girl” written on it, according to an Insider essay written by her cousin, Mykesha Mack.

The state’s department of health and human services “will review medical records, interview staff and patients, and assess the hospital’s policies and procedures” to determine if the hospital violated any regulations, according to a 23 February statement from the department. If the investigation shows that hospital staff failed to properly care for Valentine, the hospital could face fines and the potential suspension or revocation of its license.

During the 31 January board of supervisors meeting, people who spoke in support of Valentine said that Centinela hospital is known around the community for being one of the “worst hospitals in the county” for Black and Latina mothers and their infants. In 1993 a jury decided that the hospital should pay nearly $50m to a patient after it found that nurses were negligent during labor and delivery and immediately after the birth of the baby, who suffered severe brain damage, according to the LA Times.

Most recently, in August 2021 and then again in April 2022, nurses held demonstrations in front of the hospital, protesting being overworked at a facility that has too few staff members.

Since 2000, the maternal mortality rate in the US has risen nearly 60%, with about 700 people dying during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth each year. More than 80% of the deaths are preventable, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among industrialized countries and Black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women.