In December 2025, the family’s 16-month-old son was enrolled at a licensed child-care center in Houston. He was an infant in every sense that matters here: barely walking, far too young to keep himself safe, and entirely dependent on the adults the center was paid to provide.
That day, the child walked out of the building on his own. He went down a flight of stairs, through an open door, across the parking lot, and into the roadway. A passing good Samaritan found a toddler alone in the street and carried him back into the facility. Only then did the daycare learn what had happened. Until a stranger walked him back through the door, the center did not know the child had left the building at all.
A 16-month-old reached a public road, and the people responsible for watching him could not say he was missing. The family was not told until afterward. There is no version of adequate child care in which a baby leaves the building, reaches traffic, and is returned by a stranger before anyone realizes he is gone.
The center is a licensed Texas child-care center that holds itself out as equipped to care for infants and toddlers. Texas child-care licensing rules require that children be supervised at all times and that centers maintain safe premises and adequate staffing. Those are the exact protections meant to keep a one-year-old from ever reaching an exterior door alone, let alone the street. A center that accepts infants takes on the duty to know where each of them is, every minute.
Here, a door that should have been secured was open, a child who should have been supervised was not, and a center that should have known its count was off learned of the danger only when an outsider returned the child. We are pursuing the center’s staffing records, supervision and door-security policies, training records, and its account of how a toddler left the building unnoticed.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center in Harris County. We brought claims for negligence and gross negligence and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to provide child-care services in a good and workmanlike manner. We are seeking the records that show how this happened and pressing the center to account, on the record, for letting a 16-month-old leave the building and reach the road.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their baby safe, leave a door open, lose track of a one-year-old, and treat a child in the street as someone else’s lucky catch. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center in Harris County. We brought claims for negligence and gross negligence and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to provide child-care services in a good and workmanlike manner. We are seeking the records that show how this happened and pressing the center to account, on the record, for letting a 16-month-old leave the building and reach the road.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their baby safe, leave a door open, lose track of a one-year-old, and treat a child in the street as someone else’s lucky catch. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
