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Toddler Dies Pinned Under Daycare's Beanbag Chair

Employee accidentally sat on the chair, say police
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 13, 2016 8:20 AM CDT
Toddler Dies Pinned Under Daycare's Bean Bag Chair
Leonardo Sanchez   (GoFundMe)

Leonardo Sanchez should be celebrating his second birthday on Saturday, but instead of a party, "I'm planning his funeral," his mom tells Utah's KSL. In what police are calling a "very tragic, sad accident," Leonardo was playing with other children at West Jordan Child Center in the Salt Lake City suburb Thursday when he crawled under a beanbag chair, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. An employee, apparently unaware, then sat on it to read to other kids, and employees found Leonardo unconscious 10 to 15 minutes later. He was given CPR before being rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police say he suffocated. "I'm so confused on how you don't know where my kid is," says mom Danielle Sanchez. "How do you not feel him? How do you not hear him scream?"

"I dropped him off at daycare not realizing I would never be able to hold him again," Sanchez adds, per KUTV. "Somebody dropped the ball and now we're going to have to bury a boy because of that." In a statement, the daycare says "we regret deeply the tragic death of a young toddler at our daycare facility. ... We know the family well, we grieve with them, and we pray that God will provide them the comfort and peace they inevitably will need." A rep for the Utah Office of Children's Licensing says the daycare was cited twice in five years for a lack of supervision on its patio and for a hole in a fence through which a child could have escaped, reports Fox 13. An investigation is underway. (A baby girl died on her first day at daycare.)

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