{"id":143602,"date":"2025-08-13T23:26:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143602\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T23:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:26:13","slug":"nyc-day-care-center-where-tot-drowned-had-license-suspended-facing-multiple-violations-gross-negligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143602\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC day care center where tot drowned had license suspended, facing multiple violations: ‘Gross negligence’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bronx day care center where a 20-month-old girl drowned <\/a>earlier this month has been shuttered by state inspectors \u2014 who probed the facility after the Aug. 1 tragedy and found violations such as inadequate barriers by a pool, records show.<\/p>\n

The sudden closure of Anna\u2019s Butterfly Garden Family Group in Castle Hill is an about-face by state child care inspectors \u2014 who claimed to have found no problems with the facility during four separate inspections in the months before little River Edima Wilson died.<\/p>\n

The conflicting reports from the state Office of Children and Family Services<\/a>, which oversees child care facilities in the Empire State, has left reps for Wilson\u2019s heartbroken family demanding answers.<\/p>\n

Anna\u2019s Butterfly Garden Family Group day care had its license suspended and hit with nine violations on Aug. 6. Kyle Mazza\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cThe daycare was certainly inspected, as I understand it, in May. In August, there are now at least nine violations that led to River\u2019s death,\u201d family lawyer James Williams said after River\u2019s funeral Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we hope that the state will take a closer look at how they are inspecting these home daycares,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI hope that it\u2019s not the case that the state missed something. I really hope that\u2019s not the case, but we do know there are a number of violations, and we do know the state was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams also slammed the day care center for \u201cgross negligence at best.<\/p>\n

\u201cA one-year-old child doesn\u2019t go unsupervised and end up in a swimming pool unless someone who was responsible for her care completely fell down on the job,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

River Edima Wilson, 20 months old, was left unattended for 20 minutes and drowned in a day care pool in the Bronx. GoFundMe<\/p>\n

The operator of the day care center, identified in state records as Ana Gonzalez Feliz, has not commented publicly on the tragedy \u2014 and has not even responded to River\u2019s family\u2019s<\/a> questions.<\/p>\n

The child care facility was stripped of it\u2019s license on Aug. 6 and still has a slew of open citations for safety and health hazard violations, obstructed corridors and failure to notify parents of death or injury.<\/p>\n

But the records show that the facility was inspected four times between March 5, 2024, and May 14, with no violations reported \u2014 and only after an Aug. 4 inspection were the operators cited.<\/p>\n

State inspectors found nine violations during the final inspection.<\/p>\n

\u201cBarriers must exist to prevent children from gaining access to any swimming pool, drainage ditches, wells, ponds or other bodies of open waters,\u201d one citation said. <\/p>\n

The pool at Anna\u2019s Butterfly Garden Family Group day care in the Bronx where River Edima Wilson drowned Aug. 1. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

The operator of Butterfly Garden Family Group, Anna Gonalez Feliz, has not commented publicly on the tragedy. Brigitte Stelzer<\/p>\n

Another said children cannot be left \u201cwithout competent supervision at any time,\u201d while center operators were also cited for failure to notify parents \u201cimmediately\u201d in the event of a death or serious incident. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Office of Children and Family Services told The Post Wednesday that the agency \u201ccannot comment on an active investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe safety and well-being of well-being of all children in OCFS-licensed day care programs is out top priority,\u201d they said in a statement. <\/p>\n

But Williams said the family still wants answers, and said the media was invited to River\u2019s funeral in the hope that it would shed light on the system\u2019s failings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason the family invited the media is because the daycare owners and operators and workers still have yet to come forward to explain what happened,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s only through attention from the community, which is brought on by the media, that hopefully these people who have already committed this despicable act will stop torturing this family and come forward with the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ima and Ifiok Wilson at the funeral for their 20-month-old daughter, River Edima Wilson in the Bronx on Wednesday. James Keivom<\/p>\n

The lawyer said the tragic tot\u2019s parents \u2014 Ima and Ifiok Wilson \u2014 weren\u2019t even told for more than a year that the troubled child care facility had a pool on the grounds. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey found out roughly one month ago, after river had been attending the daycare for almost a year,\u201d the lawyer said. \u201c[They] confronted the daycare owner, who assured them that the pool met all of the state regulations and rules to have a pool on the premises of a daycare. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we now find out none of that was true,\u201d he said. \u201cThe pool was too close to the house. It did not have the proper alarms on the water. The gates were not secure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bronx day care center where a 20-month-old girl drowned earlier this month has been shuttered by state…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":143603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,73335,67189,23097,15780,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5305,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-143602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-child-endangerment","10":"tag-day-care","11":"tag-drownings","12":"tag-investigations","13":"tag-metro","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-the-bronx","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-us-news","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115024047947584590","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}