21-Month-Old NJ Girl Died At Daycare: Reports
CLIFTON, NJ - A New Jersey family is desperately seeking answers after their 21-month-old daughter died at a daycare center in Passaic County, according to multiple reports.
Vanessa Camila Gomez was napping at Step By Step Daycare in Clifton on Tuesday when caregivers found the girl unresponsive, ABC7 New York reported. Paramedics called to the scene were unable to revive the toddler.
"They just tell me, 'We can't, she's gone,'" the girl's mom told NBC New York.
Gomez's mom told media outlets that she dropped off Vanessa, an otherwise healthy child, just a few hours earlier at the daycare.
Updates and pictures from the daycare's monitoring app Brightwheel said the 21-month-old was awakened from a nap and had her diaper changed about 40 minutes before the daycare alerted Gomez's mother," NBC New York reported. But the next day, the note about the diaper change was gone from the app.
"There was no diaper change, the time was wrong," the owner of the daycare told ABC7.
The Passaic County Prosecutor's Office is currently investigating. Calls to the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office were not immediately returned on Saturday, but the office told NJ.com that no charges have been filed in the case.
Clifton police told ABC7 that an autopsy could take months. The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
"She was a happy girl — smart," Gomez told NJ.com.
"I'd say, 'you want Bruno?' … that was her song to go to school. She really loved the school. I didn't have any complaints about them. They always treated her really good — she never cried (about going there). She was really happy there."
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