Aug 11, 2009 6:37 am US/Eastern
4-Year-Old Abandoned On NYC Subway Platform
Mother Livid After Daycare Worker Forgets About Jailyn Howard
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Jailyn Howard, 4, seen here, was left by herself on a subway platform while at daycare on August 10, 2009.
CBS
It was just a matter of minutes, but it was enough to leave a Queens mother upset and demanding answers.
Her 4-year-old daughter was left on a subway platform after her daycare group boarded a train without her.
What was supposed to be a fieldtrip into the city was a nightmare for little Jailyn Howard.
"I was looking over here and that way and they wasn't there," Jailyn said.
The 4-year-old and her twin sister were in the city on Friday with their day care center, housed in a Jamaica home, when on the 42nd Street platform, the group and their daycare worker all got on the train without her.
Jailyn told CBS 2 HD she was very much afraid. And her mother was outraged. On Monday night she reached the daycare worker by phone.
"You have proven to me that you are negligent because in the 15 minutes that my daughter was not in your site, anybody could have came and abducted her," Janel Howard said.
The worker told the mom she thought Jailyn was with her sister on the platform and apparently the worker was distracted.
CBS 2 HD was told two of the children in the group were fighting and in the process of breaking it up, the sole daycare worker lost track of one of the littlest ones.
It wasn't until the train was already moving that the worker realized something was dreadfully wrong.
"All of a sudden she knows Jailyn is missing and she started just panicking and she went to the cops and everything," cousin Jamari Lewis said.
The daycare worker got everyone off at the next stop and when they returned to 42nd Street, Jailyn was safely with police. CBS 2 HD tried to speak with the worker, Roxanne Jack, but all she would say is 'I have no comment. I'm not answering any questions."
Lewis, who was on the fieldtrip, said the woman seemed preoccupied before the incident.
"As soon as we got to the train, she was telling us to hurry up, hurry up. Because she has to be somewhere," Lewis said.
Jailyn's mother said she's not the least bit satisfied.
"She basically was not taking responsibility for what she did," Janel Howard said.
Howard believed the daycare center, Whitney's Foundation, was licensed but a record check shows no such thing. The mom said if that is the case, her kids won't return there.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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