Owners of a San Jose home day care where two children drowned earlier this month have been arrested.
Nina Fathizadeh, 41, and Shahin Gheblehshenas, 64, surrendered Friday to police after a warrant was issued. Both are suspected of neglect of two children resulting in death, and neglect of a child resulting in non-life threatening injuries, police said.
According to the charging documents, understaffing, a separate unlicensed daycare run by both suspects, and a propped open pool gate all likely contributed to the children’s death.
On Monday, Oct. 2, according to the charging documents, Happy Happy Home Daycare was expecting to take care of five children at the home.
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But the day before, an assistant at the daycare reported she was not able to come in to work the following morning. According to the court records, Gheblehshenas also was not expected to be at the home on Monday morning, believing she had a doctor’s appointment scheduled.
Fathizadeh expressed concern she wouldn’t be able to handle all five children at the daycare by herself, yet she and her mother never made plans to address the staffing shortage or notify their customers, police say.
Since the drownings, there have been questions about how the children were able to access the pool in the first place. The court records help answer that question.
Sometime between Sunday night and the morning of the drowning, according to the court records, Gheblehshenas’ husband watered the plants behind the pool gate as he regularly does.
But he had used a clothing hanging rack to prop open the gate while he watered, and never shut the gate behind him when he finished, according to police.
The gate was still propped open when children started arriving at the daycare the following morning, and neither of the daycare operators checked to ensure it was closed before opening for business, according to the court documents.
Just after 8 a.m. Monday, the first child was dropped off at the home, according to court records. Around the same time, Gheblehshenas left the house for her doctor’s appointment.
But it turns out the doctor’s appointment had been scheduled for the following week, according to the charging documents. Rather than return home, however, Gheblehshenas went to her daughter’s home, where they were allegedly running a second, unlicensed daycare to care for Fathizadeh’s two children and two other children who were expected that Monday.
Meanwhile, back at Happy Happy Home Daycare, Fathizadeh had placed the first child inside a crib in the back room with a bottle, according to police. Over the next 25 minutes, according to court records, three other children would arrive at the home and began playing in the living room.
Then Fathizadeh opened the sliding glass door and told the three children to go into the backyard, according to police. She then headed back to the kitchen to make tea and oatmeal, police say.
For at least five minutes, according to court records, Fathizadeh worked in the kitchen, where she had no view of the children outside. When she went outside to check on the children, according to the records, Fathizadeh noticed the propped open pool gate.
She went to check the pool, finding one of the children floating in the shallow end, according to court documents. She pulled the child from the pool and began CPR, police say.
Fathizadeh then woke her sleeping brother to get his help, according to the documents, who went out to the pool and found the two other children floating in the deep end. According to the court records, he called 911 and tried performing CPR.
The two children in the deep end later died and the child pulled from the shallow end was revived.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office said both Fathizadeh and Gheblehshenas will be arraigned on Dec. 6.
