Investigate two nursery workers from El Masnou for the death of a baby in 2024

BarcelonaA court in Mataró is investigating two nursery school workers from El Masnou for the death of a child only five months old in April 2024. Although the case was initially dismissed pending the baby's autopsy, this forensic review concluded that the child died due to respiratory failure, according to sources close to the family, and the court ordered an investigation into whether there had been negligence by the nursery school.

As reported by El País and confirmed by ARA, there are currently two caregivers at the center who are listed as investigated in the case, and one of them has already testified, answering her lawyer's questions. The other caregiver, who had only been working at the center for a week and was eventually fired after a few months, could not testify because she did not show up with a lawyer. A new date must now be set for her testimony, which is expected in a few months.

According to sources close to the family, the child had been suffering from a cold in the last few days, and the day before going to the nursery, the mother took her to the CAP (primary care center), and they told her she could go to the nursery. She was taken there, however, for only a few hours, as she was in an adaptation period – she had only started going a few days earlier.

Request for help

When the mother went to pick him up, on April 17, 2024, at first there was silence at the center, because it was nap time. Suddenly, however, someone began to request the presence of a doctor. The mother, who is an anesthesiologist, offered to help. In a few seconds, she had the lifeless body of a child in her arms. She remembers it was cold and that she then realized it was her baby.

Precisely because of the state of the corpse, the mother suspects that there may have been negligence on the part of the center. For this reason, she is involved in the judicial case that investigates the circumstances of the baby's death. Although the court initially dismissed the case because the cause of the child's death was not clear, with the definitive autopsy in hand, it asked the center to specify who was supervising the children at that time. From this came the names of the two workers who are currently being investigated. One of them, the auxiliary caregiver, was very young and had only been working at the center for a few days.

In parallel, the instruction of the case has requested new investigative proceedings from the Mossos d'Esquadra, who have handled this case from the beginning. The family environment also regrets the judicial slowness, since more than two years after the death, one of the main investigated parties has not yet testified.