12-10-2010, 01:27 PM
ABC
ROYAL PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Another local day care has been disciplined after a boy was forgotten in a van -- the same way a 2-year-old girl died a month earlier in Delray Beach.
It was on the Academy for Child Enrichment’s van that state investigators report the 4-year-old boy was left alone for 2½hours.
The Florida Department of Health report stated that the “mother arrived to pick up (the) child and … (he) was not inside (the) building … (so the) staff stated, ‘Let's look outside in the child care van.’”
They did so and the boy was found.
"The two violations that they have, one is that the child is left in the van,” Palm Beach County Health Department spokesman Tim O'Connor said.
O'Connor said the day care went on to make a second equally serious mistake.
"It's incumbent upon them to report it within 24 hours, so they also did not report this,” O’Connor said.
The pre-Kindergarten student was not harmed, but the Sept. 29 incident is especially troubling to some because it came just about six weeks after a death at Katie’s Kids Learning Center in Delray Beach. It was there Haile Brockington died after being left in a hot van.
Jorge Perez, the Academy for Child Enrichment’s president, said they had a procedure in place as a result of Katie's Kids that was covered with the staff two weeks prior to the incident. Perez said the process called for a walk-through of the van, both front and back, but that wasn't done.
"We messed up in that sense," he said.
Unlike in Brockington's death, the weather was a life saver that day. The boy was left alone on the coolest day of September. The high was 75 degrees.
"It's a checks and balance," O'Connor said. "You have a child's life in your hands and their well-being."
Perez said the employee responsible for making sure the child was brought inside and verifying the transportation log was fired.