Florida Mother Discovers Child Was Left Alone in Closed Daycare After Caregivers Left

How a Child Became a Victim of Isolation and Negligence

A mother called 911 when she discovered her two-year-old daughter was left alone inside a locked and empty daycare building. The mom came to pick her daughter up, and when she arrived, she saw the daycare had all the lights off and the doors were locked. There were no adults in or around the building.

The mother started to look in the windows to see if her daughter was in the building and found her child peering through a secondary door, in the dark. Firefighters arrived shortly after and forcefully opened the doors of the daycare, reuniting the child with her mother. Our Houston daycare negligence lawyer explains more.

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How This Texas Daycare Facility Could Have Prevented This

The daycare injury attorneys at the Button Law Firm have handled many cases of caregivers neglecting to account for children at daycares. The daycare could have easily prevented this – the staff is supposed to make sure all the children in the daycare are accounted for by following procedures.

There are strict pickup processes daycares are supposed to follow to ensure this very thing doesn’t happen. Caregivers must keep track of children by name and must double-check who is picking them up. If a name has not been checked off the list, they must stay with the child until they are picked up.

This clearly didn’t happen as the daycare teachers assumed all the children were gone. They shut off the lights and locked the doors and left a toddler alone, by herself, in the dark. Leaving the question of how could this have happened? How is it possible for the daycare to not realize they have a child in their care?

The Effects Isolation Can Have on a Child at Daycare

A two-year-old is often too young to understand the complexities of this situation. All they know is that they were left alone and abandoned. This can instill long-lasting fear and anxiety in children – it can make them scared to be alone or trust adults who are there to care for them. All of this can lead to a variety of developmental issues along with the child regressing.

It’s also a very lucky situation that the child was not hurt. A young child left alone in a daycare facility can be an extreme risk, for several reasons. The child can fall, choke on a small object, burn themselves, get cut, injure a finger or limb, hit their head, and more. Two-year-old children should not be left alone and unsupervised – ever. The daycare and its workers carelessly left this child in serious danger and should be held accountable for doing so. The daycare is responsible for hiring qualified professionals that they train and supervise on how to avoid this exact situation, yet they failed to keep this child safe.

Neglect in daycares is, unfortunately, a real problem. It’s heartbreaking for parents to learn that their child was ignored or forgotten in a place they thought they trusted. Our Dallas injury lawyer explains that there are steps to take in this process to ensure your claim is properly filed against the daycare and that you hold the caregiver who put your child at risk accountable.