SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — The State Attorney for Seminole County has decided not to file criminal charges against the registered owner of an unlicensed daycare in Chuluota where a two-year-old child drowned in May.
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Investigators say Wesley Seth Rowley was able to push through a fence to gain access to the pool at the home daycare. The boy’s family says they’re devastated by the decision and are now leading a charge to change county regulations for such home-based daycares, which are registered but not licensed.
“Wesley was the light of the family,” Rowley’s grandmother Libby Baity said. “He was named after my late husband passed away. He had the most infectious smile, like he smiled and you couldn’t help but smile back.”
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However, Baity says it’s been hard to smile since May 9 when her two-year-old grandson drowned at daycare.
“My daughter actually originally showed up at the house, and when she got there, they were putting Wesley on a stretcher,” Baity said. “He was blue and unresponsive, and the caretaker of the daycare told my daughter that she left the kids outside to take another child to the bathroom inside and he must have gotten through the gate and fell in the pool.”
According to a Seminole County Sheriff’s Office investigative report, a Department of Children and Families specialist inspected the daycare and noted that he was able to push the removable mesh safety fence open even though it was shut and latched.
However, despite the faulty pool gate, the State Attorney’s Office concluded: “there was insufficient evidence to proceed with criminal charges as there was no evidence to support that the owner, Virginia Adkins, left the children unattended outside near the pool without a barrier preventing them from easily accessing the pool.”
“My daughter called me hysterical after getting the phone call from detectives,” Baity recalled. “Truthfully, she feels like there’s no justice for her son, that nobody’s being held accountable for what happened to him, as we all are. It was truly a kick in the gut.”
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The State Attorney’s Office went on to say there was no evidence Adkins had any knowledge that the barrier separating the children from the pool was defective or that one of the children would have been able to push it open.
“Those should be things that you should check every morning as a caretaker of young children,” Baity said. “For them to say that she didn’t know the gate was faulty...how? She has family also that go and use that pool. How did nobody notice the gate was faulty?”
Baity says they have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the daycare owners. She says she’s also now pushing for more regulations for unlicensed at-home daycares.
“You don’t have to be inspected quarterly, things like that, that aren’t very important to some parents and should be,” Baity said. “There’s 13 counties in Florida that require you to be licensed, but Seminole County isn’t one of them.”
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Under the “Wesley Seth’s law for at-home daycare regulations,” pool alarms would be the norm and AEDs, or automated external defibrillators, would be required.
“All schools are required to have them, why aren’t daycares required to have them,” Baity asked. “Stuff like that could hopefully prevent this from happening to another child.”
Baity says she would also like to see higher insurance coverage limits. She’s starting a petition and is about 9,000 signatures away from her goal.
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