Two day care operators arraigned in drownings
SAN JOSE >> The mother and daughter who owned an Almaden-area day care where two children drowned in October were arraigned Dec. 6 on charges that they neglected to ensure a pool gate was closed before letting children roam free in the backyard, leading to the deaths and another child needing rescue.
Shahin Gheblehshenas, 64, and Nina Fathizadeh, 41, appeared in a San Jose courtroom to answer to three felony child endangerment charges, and were informed that Fathizadeh is now charged with seven new misdemeanor child endangerment counts based on separate misconduct allegations involving different children in their care.
Both defendants surrendered Oct. 13 at the Santa Clara County Jail, where they were booked and released after posting $50,000 bail. Deputy District Attorney O'bryan Kenney asked Judge Hanley Chew to raise their bail amounts to $350,000 apiece in light of the severity of alleged crimes and the new charges, but Chew put off that decision until a court hearing set for Dec. 28.
The arraignment also was continued to that date, owing to Gheblehshenas' request for a Farsi interpreter. The attorneys who appeared for the defendants declined comment after the Dec.6 court hearing.
The felony charges stem from an investigation on how two toddler girls — 18-month-old Payton Cobb of Hollister and 16-monthold Lillian Hanan of San Jose — ended up in a pool at the Happy Happy Home Daycare on Fleetwood Drive the morning of Oct. 2.
Both children died after
being rushed to a hospital. A third child, a boy, also was found in the water but survived.
“Both of them had a duty of care to these three children, and they failed that duty,” Kenney said of the defendants. “This was a completely avoidable tragedy.”
San Jose police and the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office determined that the three children were unsupervised in a rear patio play area while Fathizadeh was making breakfast. The site was supposed to have at least two people watching the children, but a worker called in sick that morning, according to the investigation.
Detectives also found that the gate for a 5-foottall fence that surrounded the pool had been propped open. The criminal charges are based in part on accusations that the defendants fully knew Gheblehshenas' husband was known to prop open the pool gate to water plants in the yard and sometimes would forget to close it.
On the morning of the drownings, prosecutors say, Fathizadeh let the two girls and a 2-year-old boy into the backyard. She reportedly could see the unsecured pool gate but did not make any effort to close it; she then went to the kitchen,
out of view of the children, for at least five minutes.
When Fathizadeh went out to check on the children, she found the boy floating in the shallow end of the pool, pulled him out, dialed 911 and started CPR, according the investigation.
But the girls were not tended to until Fathizadeh woke her brother, who was asleep elsewhere in the home, and found the two girls floating in the deep end of the pool. The adults attempted CPR on them before they were taken to a hospital.
Fathizadeh also reportedly voiced concern to her mother about not being able to watch over the children given the worker who called in sick, and the fact that Gheblehshenas was expected to be away because of a medical appointment. Police found that the children's parents were not told that the day care was shorthanded.
And when Gheblehshenas realized that her medical appointment was actually the following week, prosecutors contend she did not return to the Fleetwood Drive home to relieve her daughter but instead headed to a separate unlicensed day care that the
family also ran.
Deborah Herting, Payton's grandmother, attended the Dec. 6 arraignment and spoke briefly to reporters, saying “what happened wasn't an accident.”
“These families will never be the same. They trusted these people,” Herting said. “You don't leave a toddler unsupervised for even 30 seconds. You just don't do it.”
Kenney said Dec. 6 that since the initial felony charges were filed, investigators found evidence of child endangerment on a separate day, involving seven children who were transported in a vehicle without proper child restraints while under Fathizadeh's care.
In the wake of the drownings, the state Department of Social Services suspended the license for the homebased facility and warned that the owners risked being barred from operating a day care again. They also were fined $11,000.
On Dec. 6, Judge Chew reinforced that action by adding a condition of the defendants' bail release, prohibiting them from caring for any children who are not their own.