Grieving Mother Demands Answers After Infant Dies at South Texas Daycare: ‘Where Was the Teacher?’

Beatriz Ibarra Villarreal dropped off her 7-month-old son Liam at a daycare center in Hidalgo, Texas on April 15 at around 1pm. The mother did not know it was the last time she would see her baby boy alive.

While she was at work, just across the street from the daycare, she noticed an unusual amount of emergency personnel going into Little Explorers Education Center.

“At around 3 p.m., I started seeing ambulances, firefighters, and police at the daycare, and I thought something happened,” Ibarra Villarreal said in an interview with a local news outlet. “I asked the teacher, ‘Is it my son?’ And she said, ‘Yes, it is your son.'”

Emergency personnel performed CPR on the child and transported him to the hospital, where he was declared dead.

Ibarra Villarreal told Fox RGV she wants justice. According to the grieving mother, her son’s death could’ve been prevented.

“In the hospital, the doctor told me that for him to get to that point of turning blue and being cold, it meant he had 15 to 30 minutes without oxygen. That’s when I ask myself, where was the teacher? Where were the people who were supposed to be taking care of him?”

The South Texas woman claims she took her son to the doctor on Monday, one day before his death, but he was dismissed. “The analysis came out good, they checked his lungs, and everything was good,” she said.

The official investigation, reported by Valley Central 4, includes differing timelines from those given to Fox RGV by the mother. According to the local news outlet, authorities discovered the mother had taken the infant to the hospital on Tuesday, moments before she dropped him off at the daycare and went to work.

Additionally, Telemundo 40 reported that on Tuesday, medical professionals took X-rays of the child and prescribed him antibiotics. It is unknown if the child had taken the medicine before being dropped off at Little Explorers Education Center.

The autopsy results, revealed on Saturday, confirmed Liam’s cause of death to be two respiratory illnesses. Authorities are not investigating the daycare center at this time.