A 6-year-old Memphis girl named Winter Jones died on Aug. 13 after being left inside a daycare van operated by Kid University. She had been dropped off that morning and was supposed to be taken to Macon Hall Elementary School. This week, a grand jury indicted three people connected to the daycare: van driver Tametria Norry, assistant director Sabrina Powe and assistant Amilya Hardin, on charges of aggravated child neglect, criminally negligent homicide and tampering with government records.
The charges followed a Tennessee Department of Human Services investigation, which found the daycare failed to complete required vehicle inspections and walk-throughs and did not accurately maintain its transportation log. Those procedures are the core of van safety: a physical check of every seat after each run and a written count that matches children to the vehicle they left in.
For families here on the Suncoast, where daycare and after-school vans run routes from Sarasota to Bradenton to North Port, the case is a reminder that safety lives in routines. Ask your provider who performs the post-trip walk-through, how headcounts are documented and who reviews the log. If your child rides a van, what did your daycare tell you about its safety checks?
