Homestead daycare center agrees to $5 million settlement after death of infant

Seven months after a Homestead infant was found unresponsive at a daycare center and later died, a police investigation still isn’t complete and the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner has yet to issue a cause of death.

But earlier this month, the owners of Lincoln-Marti Daycare agreed to a $5 million dollar settlement with the family of 9-month-old Tayvon Tomlin, according to the family and court documents. As part of the agreement, the grieving family dropped a civil lawsuit filed months ago in Miami-Dade Circuit Court that argued the daycare center was negligent in its handling of Tayvon’s case.

Tayvon’s mother, Keiara Whorely, 25, said she’s hoping to create a coalition that would push for daycare center reform in the state Legislature and that any bill would call for on-site CPR training for workers and more cameras in the centers.

“I’m still hurting,” Whorely, who has two other young sons, said this week. “Something is missing. My son is missing.”

Representatives of the daycare center at 510 Krome Ave., have been mostly silent since Tayvon’s death back in July. There was no press release issued on the settlement and the attorney representing Lincoln-Marti did not return calls to her office. But a joint stipulation confirming the case had been dropped and a settlement was reached was filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on Jan. 3. It doesn’t state an amount.

Despite the settlement, Tomlin family attorney Michael Levine didn’t hold back on criticism. He blasted the business, saying managers had not abided by a state statute that calls for one daycare worker for every four infants in a facility. Levine claimed there was one worker for at least seven children that day.

“They broke the law and they lied about it,” he said. “This settlement is holding them accountable.”

Levine, who took depositions from four Lincoln-Marti workers before the settlement was reached, said the director of the center that day said as much under oath when she agreed there weren’t enough employees and that a camera inside the room with Tayvon wasn’t working.

During a deposition taken in November, Lincoln-Marti Director Rosa Razuri responded “Yes” to a question posed by Levine: If the law was being broken because there was only one worker for seven kids. In the deposition, Razuri also responded “No,” when asked if she told any of the parents that the daycare was short-staffed that day.

On July 19, during a caretaker’s early afternoon rounds, 9-month-old Tayvon was found motionless, but with a slight pulse during nap time at the Homestead daycare. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors couldn’t save him. The child’s grandfather said Tayvon seemed fine a few hours earlier when the two were playing before he went off to daycare.

Staff at Lincoln-Marti offered little information and three months after his death, the family attorney made public a trio of video feeds from inside the daycare and filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

One of the edited video clips shows a daycare worker holding the unresponsive child almost upside down and patting him on the back for about 30 seconds. Tayvon is wearing a white diaper. Two other clips lasting less than 20 seconds each, show a woman walking and cradling the lifeless child and giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation a few times as she walks.

Still, seven months after Tayvon’s death, his family is seeking answers as to what exactly happened. Miami-Dade Police won’t conclude its investigation until the medical examiner issues its findings. And the medical examiner continues to study forensics, testing the child’s blood and probing for any type of head injury like shaken-baby syndrome — though so far there is nothing that indicates that’s how Tayvon died.

Tayvon’s mom, Keiara Whorley, said she just wants to make sure others don’t suffer like she has.

“Whatever comes of this, we want to impact parents to not be in this situation,” she said.