A mom in Ohio is looking for justice after her two-month-old baby died in the home of her daycare provider. Taylor Bush dropped off her daughter, Di'Yanni Griffin, at Nana’s Home Daycare along with her sons. When Bush texted the daycare owner, Danielle Townsend, to say she was coming to pick up her kids, Townsend said she wasn't at the daycare, but her sister was there watching the kids.
When Bush showed up, the sister answered the door and was holding Di'Yanni.
“I knock on the door, go in there — she told me my baby was breathing heavy,” Bush said. “I say, ‘Why didn’t you call?’ She had no answer.”
Bush lives in the unit above the daycare, so she took DiYanni and went upstairs, only to realize something awful.
“So I go to walk out the door and I close the door behind me so I’m like, ‘Hey, mama baby.’ I realize her neck is, just she’s just lifeless,” Bush told Fox 8.
Bush then went back to the daycare, where she tried to save her daughter.
“So, I’m like, ‘Can you help with CPR?’ She’s not helping. So, I immediately put my daughter on the ground, so I give her CPR, and while I’m doing that, I call 911,” said Bush.
While doing CPR, Bush recalled that the sister kept trying to call Townsend instead of helping dave Di'Yanni.
"Why aren't you trying to call police?" Bush thought at the time.
Di'Yanni was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late to do anything for her.
"They could not find a pulse for my daughter at all. I begged them — the hospital — to keep working on her because they had already pronounced her dead," Bush said. "I begged them to keep working on my baby, because I couldn't cope with the words, 'She was gone.'"
It was then that Bush was given the news that made her heart sink.
“They told me about how cold my daughter was that she had stopped breathing a long time ago,” she said.
As for Townsend, who has been working with kids for 15 years, she said that her sister did notice something was wrong before Bush picked up Di'Yanni.
"My sister calls me and says, 'Call her mother,'" recalled Townsend. "I said, 'Well, her mother just texted me; what's wrong?' She said, ‘The baby is breathing fast."
When Bush went to pick up her sons after leaving the hospital, she was upset with the way the daycare handled the situation.
“They showed no remorse, no apologies, not anything, no ‘sorry for your loss,’ no condolences,” she said.
Representatives from the daycare began posting on social media that Di'Yanni was ill, but police have said the coroner thinks the baby died of natural causes. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said they are monitoring the situation and will determine of the daycare license should be suspended.
“ODJFS is monitoring this tragic situation very closely. County JFS agencies are responsible for inspections of in-home child care, with oversight of ODJFS,” the spokesperson said. “The county agency is conducting an investigation and actively working with child protective services and law enforcement. ODJFS would make the final determination on whether to suspend Nana’s Home Daycare license if the county agency recommends suspension.”
As for Bush, she's now left heartbroken after the death of her daughter. She said she had prayed to one day have a little girl, and now that dream is broken.
“I'm hurt. I blame myself," the grieving mother said. "I don’t know how to cope, honestly I don’t. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before … I’m just broken, I’m broken."
I can't even imagine what Bush is going through right now. I hope she is able to get answers for the death of her baby girl.
UPDATE:
The cause of death for Di’Yanni Griffin, the 2-month-old girl who died while at a Cleveland daycare, has been determined to be pneumonia, according to the Medical Examiner.
A preliminary autopsy indicated the baby girl likely died from natural causes and the final report confirms that Di’Yanni had pneumonia.
In a statement to News 5, the attorney representing Bush said, "The family is relieved by these preliminary indications today that Di'Yanni did not die from an intentional act of the daycare staff. However, it is still too early for us to know whether her death was attributable to a failure to act on the part of the daycare."
That attorney, Eric Henry, said that Griffin "was in apparent good health" in the days leading up to and the morning of her death. Henry said the baby did not have a fever or breathing problems was was eating normally.