Police arrested the administrator and two staff members of a Clayton County daycare facility where a 2-year-old girl died Monday after being left in a van following a field trip. They say Jazmin Green was in the van outside Marlo’s Magnificent Early Learning Center in Jonesboro for between two and a half and three hours after a group returned from a trip to Chuck E. Cheese.
Marlo Maria Fallings, 41, was charged with cruelty to children, involuntary manslaughter, and reckless conduct. Quantabia Shantell Hopkins, 23, faces the same charges. The third person arrested was a juvenile, police said.
Authorities say someone noticed that Jazmin was not in the daycare center on Monday afternoon, and she was later found in the van alone. She was taken to Southern Regional Medical Center, but she did not survive.
On Monday night, the little girl’s parents told FOX 5 that both Jazmin and her older brother attend the facility. He was on the trip, too, they say. The parents say Jazmin had been attending the daycare center for two years before her death.
Fallings and Hopkins both faced a judge on Tuesday afternoon. They were granted $35,000 bond, and their next hearing will be July 5. The juvenile did not appear in court.
According to state records obtained by FOX 5 on Monday, Marlo’s Magnificent Early Learning Center only partially met requirements for transportation safety required by the state’s Department of Early Care and Learning. A report from the department’s website dated March 1, 2011 noted that the state “requires that at the completion of every trip, a check must be made to assure that no child remains on the vehicle.” The report goes on to say that the staff “did not initial or document the field trip form for children transported on October 26, 2010.”
The report said the center would “instruct staff regarding this safety measure.”
Attorney Bruce Harvey said there are no words to describe what happened to the little girl, but the question is whether her death is both a tragedy and a crime, or just a tragedy.
via cafemom.com
