In September 2025, the family’s two-year-old son was enrolled at a licensed child-care center in Laredo. He was a toddler, completely dependent on the adults the center was paid to watch over him.
According to the petition, while the child was in the center’s care he was allowed to sit outdoors unsupervised for long enough to pick up and swallow a dangerous quantity of small rocks. No staff member intervened, and the petition alleges the center either never realized what had happened or chose not to tell the boy’s parents.
The danger surfaced that night at home. The two-year-old awoke choking, vomiting, and gasping as the rocks forced their way back up, and his parents rushed him to the emergency room. Imaging there showed more than twenty rocks still lodged in his small body even after he had repeatedly thrown up, and for days afterward he was in pain and distress as the rocks continued to pass through his system.
The center is a licensed Texas child-care center serving toddler, pre-kindergarten, and school-age children. Texas child-care rules require centers to supervise children at all times, to keep them within a caregiver’s sight and hearing, to maintain adequate staffing, and to provide a safe environment. Those are the precise protections meant to make it impossible for a two-year-old to sit outside long enough to eat a handful of rocks. The petition alleges the center failed at each of these and failed to provide basic care.
A two-year-old does not swallow more than twenty rocks while he is being properly watched. We are pursuing the center’s staffing and supervision records, its outdoor-play and head-count policies, its incident-reporting practices, and its account of how a child in its care ingested a dangerous quantity of rocks without anyone noticing. We are also pursuing why his parents only learned something was wrong when he woke up choking at home.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center in Webb County. We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to supervise, the failure to provide a safe environment, the failure to keep adequate staff, the failure to render aid and seek medical care, and the failure to notify the parents of the child’s injury. We are seeking the records that show how a two-year-old was left outdoors long enough to swallow a dangerous quantity of rocks and why no one told his family.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their child safe, leave a two-year-old outside long enough to swallow more than twenty rocks, and then send him home as if nothing happened. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center in Webb County. We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to supervise, the failure to provide a safe environment, the failure to keep adequate staff, the failure to render aid and seek medical care, and the failure to notify the parents of the child’s injury. We are seeking the records that show how a two-year-old was left outdoors long enough to swallow a dangerous quantity of rocks and why no one told his family.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their child safe, leave a two-year-old outside long enough to swallow more than twenty rocks, and then send him home as if nothing happened. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
