Day care worker stabs infants
Victims include three babies, two adults at unlicensed facility
Kayla Cho woke up shortly after 3:30 a.m. Friday to the sound of screaming coming from a home on the block where she lives. Another neighbor, Mike Hsu, heard loud thuds. Soon the frightening noises turned into a cry for help from what neighbors described as a day care in a red brick townhouse in Queens.
“A woman was screaming, ‘Help me! Somebody just help me!” Cho said.
Moments later, police swarmed the block and discovered a ghastly scene: three infants, including a 3-day-old, and two adults, had been stabbed by an employee who then cut her own wrist.
The stabbings occurred about 3:40 a.m. at the facility, a residential day care center in the Flushing neighborhood, police said. The infants, all of whom were less than 1 month old, were taken to New York-presbyterian Hospital. One of the adults who was stabbed was the father of one of the infants, police said; he was stabbed in the leg. The other adult was a co-worker of the employee and was stabbed in the torso, police said. All of the victims were in critical but stable condition.
The facility was first identified as a day care center but according to the New York state Office of Children and Family Services, the facility was not a licensed or regulated child care program. Monica Mahaffey, a spokeswoman for the agency, said that state regulated child care programs are prohibited from caring for infants less than 6 weeks of age unless they meet additional requirements.
When officers first arrived at the location, the employee who had cut her own wrist was unconscious, police said. But she regained consciousness after officers applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and the employee, 52, was placed in police custody.
Two police investigators in white crime scene suits went in and out of the home all Friday morning. Two knives were recovered at the scene, police said.