Lancia Isaac with her baby daughter, Brooklyn
Jacksonville, FL — Lancia Isaac, a grieving mother from Florida, is asking for support after her 4-month old baby named Brooklyn tragically died after being left in a hot van for nearly 5 hours. Darryl Ewing, the daycare worker who is reportedly responsible for the baby’s untimely death, is now facing charges of child neglect.
On Wednesday, Jacksonville police responded to a report of an unresponsive infant at Love & Hope Preschool and Academy where they found Brooklyn still strapped in her car seat inside the van as temperatures reached about 92 degrees. She was rushed to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead shortly after.
Earlier that day, Isaac placed Brooklyn and her two other children in the care of Ewing, the 56-year old co-owner of Love & Hope Preschool and Academy. He was driving a van to transport the children to the facility. They arrived at 8:25am and unloaded the children but somehow left Brooklyn inside the van.
Daycare employees only noticed the baby was still inside the van when Isaac called to make pick-up arrangements around 1:03pm. They realized Brooklyn had not been checked in and when they searched for her, they found her still strapped in her car seat inside the van and unresponsive. That’s when they called emergency services.
Upon investigation, police found that Ewing was in charge of maintaining a separate driver’s log to record the children placed onto the van but he failed to log in Brooklyn although he logged in her other siblings.
“Interviews of other daycare center employees indicated it is the van driver’s responsibility to check and make sure children are offloaded from the van at the daycare center,” the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office wrote in a statement. “It was determined the suspect’s actions (and lack thereof) failed to provide the victim with the necessary supervision and provide services to protect the victim’s physical health, all which was essential to the victim’s well-being and contributed to the death of the victim.”
Ewing was arrested and is booked into jail for child neglect as police are doing further investigation.
Meanwhile, Isaac has set up a GoFundMe page to help their family cover the costs for Brooklyn’s funeral. Support came overflowing and over a thousand people helped raise more than double the $10,000 goal.