A trail of questions in toddler’s tragic death
A child, a little boy, strapped into his protective car seat.
A parked red Hyundai, all the windows rolled up, baking in the Indian summer heat.
No air, no escape, no intervention and no rescue in time. A tragic, gruesome death. A window shattered to reach in, the wail of sirens, the frantic efforts of emergency responders, the race to hospital ... and then the grim word on Thursday night that the youngster had died.
Patrick, 3-year-old son of Justina and Dariusz Adamski. How could this have happened? In broad daylight, at a parking lot behind an Etobicoke condo complex, a vehicle with a toddler inside, left for several hours when temperatures outside hit 26 C.
He would have been gasping. He surely would have been crying.
Who could possibly be so careless, so inattentive, so negligent?
As the hours passed and word spread through Toronto, those were the questions being asked. And there was rage. Who? And how? And why? On Friday morning, a 50-year-old woman shuffled into court, dishevelled in a long grey T-shirt, black leggings, flip-flops. She’d spent the night in custody and was taken to court from 22 Division in a cruiser.
Zeljana Kosovac has been charged with criminal negligence causing death.
The nanny.
The caregiver. The individual, neighbours told the Star (this was confirmed by Toronto Police Const. David Hopkinson) who regularly picked up the child in the morning, and, then, it is believed, delivered the boy to a care facility. She’d pick him up again at the end of the day.
A parent’s worst nightmare — there are many — that so practical and regimented a routine could end in such horror. As so many working parents are forced to do: put their most precious possession into the hands of a trusted other.
This trusted other spoke not a word aloud in court, conversing only briefly in hushed tones with the duty counsel, her neutral expression frozen in place.
Mere minutes the proceeding lasted at the College Park courthouse. In “ladies’ court” as it’s known because this is where females charged with an offence, from across the city, are usually brought for first appearance bail hearings.
A snap of the fingers and it was done.
Crown and duty counsel jointly recommended Kosovac should be released on her own recognizance, on $5,000 surety, no deposit required, with only the most minor of conditions attached: contact with the child’s parents prohibited, relinquishing of her passport within 12 hours of release. (The hearing was otherwise under a publication ban.) But there were oddities. Entirely without precedent, Kosovac was flanked by court constables as she exited the public door of the courtroom, scooting in quick-step down the long corridor, two men struggling to keep up, one presumably a lawyer, the other a fellow who’d been clutching instructions for posting bond, never needed.
Down to the main floor of the building, out and across the plaza, walking briskly south on Bay St., trailed all the way by a posse of reporters and TV cameras, then into a cab.
That was the last that was seen of Kosovac, stone-faced behind dark sunglasses, as the trio was chased by media.
All studiously ignored the barrage of questions thrown at them and the cameras right up close.
Information remains scant on the police investigation, but heartwrenching in what is known.
Neighbours insist Kosovac was a vigilant caregiver and would never, in her right mind, leave a child unattended. Nobody has an explanation for it. The accused owns a unit in the Mill Rd. building, in the Burnhamthorpe Rd. and Renforth Dr. area, where the car was parked, according to mortgage documents found by the Star.
A relative of the accused told the Star that Kosovac has just come through a difficult, distressing year, during which she lost her husband to cancer, a year ago this weekend.
Residents of the apartment building told the Star the boy was unconscious when a superintendent smashed in one of the sedan’s windows to rescue him around 1 p.m. Thursday. Leaving a scene strewn with the car seat, a pair of child’s shoes, a toy, paramedics rushed the child to hospital in critical condition but he could not be saved.
Const. Hopkinson said it’s too early to ascribe the death to a high temperature inside the car, but the case is a stark reminder of the perils of hot vehicles. An autopsy for the boy was scheduled later Friday.
“We have a very hot start to our fall season,” Hopkinson said. “It’s a horrible reminder . . . why it is so important not to leave kids or pets in a car unattended.”
As has become so poignantly customary, a makeshift vigil was set up for the boy by the parking lot where he was found. General contractor Roger Reynolds and his co-worker Lisa Taschuk were among those who stopped by to pay their respects yesterday.
They’d been working in the adjacent building all day Thursday and passed by the lot several times on their way to get coffee and lunch. They didn’t notice anything amiss until the emergency crews arrived.
“We knew something wasn’t right, with the brigade of emergency vehicles coming down the road,” Taschuk said. “You just don’t expect something like this to happen, but every year it seems to happen.”
“The baby seat was sitting right here,” Reynolds said, gesturing to the sidewalk, steps away from the memorial. “When I got home, I hugged my 4-year-old and just kept hugging. I didn’t sleep last night.
“I keep asking myself, could I do something like that?”
Laying four white roses at the makeshift shrine and holding her 8-month-old son in her arms, Helen Ksiazek wept.
“I’m overcome with so much sadness this happened. As a mother of a son, it is very upsetting,” she said, kissing her baby’s cheeks and stroking his head.
Linda Canning and her son walked over from a neighbouring building and laid yellow carnations in between stuffed animals and notes. She’d watched the emergency scene unfold from her balcony on Thursday.
“I saw that car seat sitting there and it breaks my heart. We keep visiting the vigil because we want the family to know we are thinking of them,” said Canning.
Larry Armstrong lives across the street. He arrived with a bouquet of flowers and a prayer.
“It just really hit me. I wish I had a child of my own and I don’t. I just feel so bad for the family.” He added: “I just pray to God he didn’t suffer.”
Lisa Frenette brought her two young sons to pay their respects at the parking lot. The boys brought a brown stuffed bear and a moose, both stitched with a red maple leaf to place on the growing pile.
“It’s nice to see that all these people care,” said Frenette. “It’s just really tragic.”
As someone who lives nearby, Frenette added that it was difficult to think of the time she spent at their home playing with her own children when someone else’s son was suffering not far away.”
At the dead child’s Mississauga home, the family, who have another son, according to a neighbour, was not to be seen.
They declined to speak when reached by the Star.
Their grief is unimaginable, their loss immeasurable.
Kosovac’s next court appearance is Oct. 16. With files from Victoria Gibson, Star staff and The Canadian Press Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.