A toddler suffocated under a bean bag after a childcare worker unknowingly sat on top of him, as he read a book to the other children.
Police have confirmed that they were called to the West Jordan Child Center in Utah where they found one-year-old Leonardo Sanchez unresponsive.
Security camera footage showed the boy crept beneath the bean bag chair to hide, and under it for around 15 minutes, according to the Washington Post.
The child later died in hospital, police confirmed in a statement.
“We have a toddler that was under a bean bag that was sat on by an adult,” the spokesman says. “That adult, according to everything we’ve seen, did not know the child was underneath.”
“How could this happen? He’s a big boy. How did they lose track of him?” the child’s mother, Danielle Sanchez, told KUTV.
“Somebody dropped the ball, and now we’re going to have to bury a boy because of that.”
“We regret deeply the tragic death of a young toddler at our day care facility,” said West Jordan Child Center in a statement through attorney Barry Johnson.
“No words adequately describe the depth of the sorrow we feel. And, of course, we do not pretend to understand how devastating this is for the family,”
No charges have currently been laid towards the centre of the employee, who has not been named.
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