Toddler remembered as funny, mischievous boy

OAKLAND PARK — Two-yearold Noah Sneed loved to play with light switches when his family wasn’t looking.

He’d run away laughing when he got caught.

He swiped food off tables, especially sweets from his aunt’s house.

“Noah — he used to steal,” his aunt said at his funeral in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. “He used to go in our refrigerator and take stuff out and eat it. He would take my doughnuts. One time I had cotton candy on the table, and he didn’t eat it. He licked it. You could see the wet mark.”

His aunt didn’t say her name, but said she was Noah’s mother’s younger sister.

“I’m going to miss yelling at him, telling him to get off my table,” she said.

Noah’s aunt said she’d left extra doughnuts out for him on July 29. But he never came to get them, she said.

That was the day Noah died after he was left in a hot day care van on a summer day that saw temperatures in the 90s. The van driver, whose name was not released, forgot Noah in the van when she broke protocol by turning off a safety alarm before making sure that no child remained inside, an inspectors’ report said.

His death has become a reminder to drivers to double check for children in the back seat, said Angela Mathis, a church ambassador who officiated the ceremony.

Noah’s death has also inspired legislators to revise laws that would prevent the deadly mistake, she said.

“Tragedy has stricken this family, but what it has done for all of us is to cause all of us to take another look,” Mathis said in Noah’s eulogy. “Because of it, everyone is taking another look. Everybody is checking their cars, because of Noah.”

Mathis said that in the two short years he was alive, Noah’s life will shape the nation. It will cause day cares to care for the children they have in their supervision, she said.

About 200 people attended Noah’s funeral, praying over his family and celebrating his short life. The room in RightWay Ministries church was decorated with Mickey Mouse balloons and a white carpet sprinkled with rose petals leading to his casket.

Family and friends crowded around Chanese Sneed and Tony Bell, Noah’s father. Family members spoke of their last memories of Noah, and remembered him as a loving little boy who gave hugs freely with his tongue sticking out of his grinning mouth.

Chaquita Davis said she considered Noah a nephew. She grew up with the boy’s mother, and their children were extremely close. His death is a huge hit for her kids, she said.

Sneed was living with Davis while pregnant with Noah, she said.

“Noah was such a crybaby,” Family members gathered at the Ceressa’s Daycare & Preschool on Thursday to remember Noah Sneed, a 2-year-old boy who was found dead in a transport van.

Davis said. “He used to keep me up all night. Then when he got older, everything was funny to him. He loved playing with the lights.”

Davis said she can remember him playing with the light switch right by her room, and can still

remember the sound of his mischievous laugh when she caught him.

And he was always with his mother, she said. Where she went, he went.

“It’s so hard seeing her without seeing him,” she said.

MICHAEL LAUGHLIN/SUN SENTINEL