Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘I need justice for my baby’
Mother shares her ordeal after boy, 2, died in day care van
OAKLAND PARK – Chanese Sneed recalls placing her youngest son, 2-year-old Noah, into the day care van on a Monday morning, the same way she’d done countless times before.
She said she remembers strapping him into the child car seat in the van’s second row of seats, right next to the window.
She kissed her son. She said she’d see him soon. That was the last time she saw him alive.
As Noah’s grieving family plans his funeral this weekend, they’re still seeking answers on how he was left in the sweltering van for about five hours.
Neither of Noah’s parents can sleep knowing how their little boy died — knowledge that feels like torture.
“He was my shadow,” Sneed, 33, said in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. “Where I went, he went.”
After being placed in the van on July 29, Noah and other kids were driven to the day care they attended in Oakland Park, Ceressa’s Enrichment and Empowerment Academy.
The driver, whose name hasn’t been released, parked the white Ford E-350 Super Duty van but broke procedure by turning off a safety alarm before making sure that no child remained inside, an inspectors’ report said.
At 9:30 a.m. the driver allowed an unspecified number of children off the van, the report said.
At 3 p.m. a day care employee found Noah’s body in a regular seat of the van, wearing a seat belt. Chanese Sneed said she doesn’t know how her son ended up out of the child car seat that she said she personally strapped him into.
Sneed said she can’t see why the driver turned off the van’s safety alarm before she was supposed to. A county report said the driver should have inspected the van before turning off an alarm that’s meant to ensure drivers check the seats.
Sneed said someone from the day care had picked her son up almost every day, and she can’t understand why that Monday was different. Noah died on a summer day that saw temperatures rise into the 90s.
The day care also failed to fill out a log accounting for all the children who got off the bus, according to the county report. Attendance wasn’t taken at the day care that day, either. Maybe then staff would have realized Noah was missing, Sneed said.
“They’re supposed to take care of him,” Sneed said. “I just don’t get it. How would you feel if you give your child a kiss and tell him you’ll see him later, and then come to find out there is no later?”
Would’ve been with his father
Had there been a later, Noah would have been sent to Chesapeake, Virginia, to stay with his dad’s side of the family for a year
and get to know them better. There were big travel plans for the boy.
“That was the plan,” said Noah’s great-great aunt, Ann Brown. She lives in Miami Gardens, and has been housing Noah’s great-grandmother, Clara Bell, who traveled down from Virginia over the weekend.
“They were supposed to come down to Miami this very same weekend, to take him up to Virginia,” Brown said. “Instead, now they’re coming to bury him.”
They’ve been trying to help Noah’s father, Tony Bell, plan his young son’s funeral.
“He’s going through a lot right now,” Clara Bell said. “He’s continually working to try to keep his mind off it, but he’s not sleeping well. We’re trying to convince him to get some rest.”
Tony Bell works at McDonald’s, and his family members have been helping him watch his older son, 9-year-old Tony Bell Jr.
Planning a funeral
Brown said right now, the family is just trying to make it through the funeral.
Brown said she sat Tony Bell down and asked him: “Tony, how are you really doing?”
He told her he’d be all right.
“But he’s not getting rest. I can understand the loss of a loved one. You can’t be yourself,” Brown said. “But I can’t say how he really feels — I’ve never lost a child. We’re just trying to comfort him and talk to him and keep him focused.”
Noah’s family wants someone held accountable. The Broward Sheriff ’s Office is investigating his death as possible manslaughter.
“I need justice for my baby, because he did not deserve to die the way he did,” Sneed said.
Noah’s dad also “wants justice for his son,” Brown said. “He can’t figure out why they left him in that van. That’s the part that’s shaken him, that somebody needs to be held accountable for what happened.”
Noah used to sleep in his mother’s bed with her every night, she said.
Sneed declined to describe in detail how long Noah had been going to day care at Ceressa’s, or the circumstances that led to Sneed and her kids living in a homeless shelter. She said all she can do now is try to make it through her son’s burial and push for an outcome in the case.
She isn’t comforted by memories of Noah.
“He was joyful. Everyone thought he was so funny,” she said. “These are the memories we have of him. But I don’t want the memories. I want him.”
Memorial services for Noah are planned in Fort Lauderdale on Friday and Saturday.
A visitation is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, at 893 NW 28th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale. Noah’s funeral is planned at 11 a.m. Saturday at the RightWay Ministries, 3280 W. Broward Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale.