A woman found her two-year-old daughter locked inside a daycare centre alone after she arrived minutes late to pick her up.
The incident occurred in Florida state in the United States (US) and Stephanie Martinez is pursuing legal action against Plantation KinderCare after she went to pick up her daughter Anastasia and found her abandoned in a dark room, standing on a chair and crying.
The woman called the emergency service who reunited her with her daughter. ‘She’s crying, she’s in there by herself,’ Martinez could be heard telling the 911 operator in the cell phone video she began taking when she saw Anastasia alone in the room.
Martinez says her child is now ‘traumatized.’
‘It’s the worst feeling ever. You feel helpless,’ Martinez told NBC 6. ‘You can’t do anything to console her. She was definitely stressed out and definitely crying the whole time she was there by herself.’
The daycare official while giving an explanation of the entire episode, said that she and a teacher were the last employees on the premises and responsible for closing.
“The teacher uses a tablet device to check all of the children out before closing the daycare center,” according to a police report which added, “The daycare closes at 6pm, but staff typically stay later because of parents who often come later for pickup, like Martinez, who picks up another child earlier.”
Burrillo and Viggiano both left around 6:20pm, they told police. Martinez arrived eight minutes later. She told police that she did not receive a call from the daycare to let them know her child was still there.
Both employees have since been placed on administrative leave and the police are now investigating the incident.
