Child endangerment case dismissed against Uniontown day-care worker
A Fayette County judge has dismissed a child endangerment case against a Uniontown woman accused of dropping a baby at a day-care center.
In a ruling handed down Friday, Senior Judge Gerald R. Solomon wrote that, after considering a pretrial motion submitted by Deanna Fahringer, the attorney for 25-year-old Raquel Viola Dues, he agreed that the prosecution lacked evidence to prove the elements of the crime of endangering the welfare of a child.
According to Solomon, Dues, who was working at the ABC Schoolhouse on North Gallatin Avenue, had a duty to protect the 11-month-old child, but she did not know the child was in circumstances that could threaten her welfare.
Solomon reasoned that the prosecution could not prove that Dues’ actions in caring for the baby and reporting the injury to her parents was so lame or meager as to constitute a failure of her duty of care.
“Here, we have a child who, by accident, apparently suffered an injury while in the defendant’s care, an injury that not even the child’s parents and grandparents discovered until the next day,” Solomon wrote. “Defendant, believing that the child had only bumped her head, applied a cold pack and comforted the child. The child stopped crying and fell asleep.”
“Common sense tells us there was no criminal action by defendant in the circumstances shown by the evidence and that no crime was committed,” Solomon concluded.
Police lodged the charge against Dues after she allegedly dropped Charlie Hayes onto the floor at the day-care center on July 19.
Although Dues initially claimed the child had tipped over from a seated position, video surveillance footage from the day-care center showed that Dues was standing and holding the child, facing out, when the child thrust forward and fell to the floor, according to testimony at a hearing in March from the center’s owner, Margaret Smalley.
The child’s father, George Hayes of Adah, testified that when he picked up his daughter from day care, Dues informed him that Charlie Hayes had toppled forward while reaching for a toy and that she bumped her head. George Hays said Dues told him she treated the baby with an ice pack. He told the court that he didn’t observe any bumps or bruises on his child’s head, but she was “very fussy” for the remainder of the day.
After the child’s grandparents, who kept her overnight, reported to Jessica Hayes, the mother, that the child was not reaching for toys with her left hand nor crawling, and bruises were discovered near the child’s shoulder, she was taken to taken to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., where she was treated for a broken collarbone, Jessica Hayes testified.
Jessica Hayes told the court at that hearing that she would have taken her baby to the doctor immediately had she known the child had fallen from a standing position rather than toppling forward from a seated position.