EXCERPTS
A 23-month-old girl has died after she was found unresponsive in a backyard pool next door to the daycare where she wandered away from in Mission, B.C., according to police.
Police were called to Melissa’s Bright Beginnings Childcare Center last Wednesday afternoon after someone at the daycare noticed the toddler had been missing for nearly 10 minutes. Shortly after, officers, canine units, and RCMP Air One aircraft swarmed the area searching for the missing child. Police discovered the little girl in the backyard pool of a residence neighbouring the daycare centre.
She was airlifted to hospital, police said.
Insp. Ben Rodrigue said the RCMP’s first priority is to assist those involved.
“As you can imagine, this is really traumatic for everybody,” he told CTV News Vancouver on Wednesday. “Family members, as well as the daycare employees, our main focus right now is to provide them with support.”
Fraser Health conducted a surprise inspection of Melissa’s Bright Beginnings Childcare Center in early January where they found several violations. The business is only allowed to have a maximum of three children under the age of 36 months in its facility at any one time, but there were five children in the daycare at the time of the inspection.
It is unclear how many children were in the care of the daycare at the time of the toddler’s disappearance.