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breitbart reports that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and Dallas police are investigating how the girl was left alone for nearly two hours on Tuesday night.
She was asleep in a high chair and was not injured.
"I was so upset," said the girl's mother, Ashley Hunter. "I was never going to put my child in day care. She had only been there three weeks."
Hunter said she couldn't get past the gate which was blocking the driveway at L&S Early Childhood Learning Academy. So she called police. Rescue workers broke the door to get the girl.
Spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales said Family and Protective Services, which licenses child-care centers, has not yet decided if they will take action against the center.
It depends on the agency's findings. Sanctions might include temporarily closing the place, or even revoking their permit. They could also exclude the responsible caregivers from working with children there.
According to the police report, the owners told police the last person left the facility at 6 p.m. and did not realize the child was inside.
Dallas police also have not decided whether to file criminal charges or not. I would think this would be a no brainer.
"It appears that it was just a communication breakdown in that nobody realized that that child was still there," Nichols said.
Here's where it should get easier to decide. At a different daycare business that operated in the same building, they had an 8-month-old boy die in 2003 from heat exposure. He had been left in a vehicle. The state closed that center. Gonzales said the center has new owners and operates under a different name.
But something is still wrong obviously.
L&S has been cited for six violations since February 2006. Those include record-keeping violations, using prohibited bumper pads and comforters in infants' cribs, and also employing a caregiver without CPR or first-aid training.
Their track record would seem to show incompetence.