A nursery practitioner was sentenced to 40 months in jail today after a toddler suffocated in a camping sleeping bag while being forced to nap at a private nursery.
A court heard Noah Sibanda, who was 14 months old, died after being wrapped tightly in the sleeping bag – designed for use under canvas in cooler weather – and put face down to sleep on a soft cushion within an indoor teepee.
A judge was told the ‘kind’ and ‘gentle’ toddler had a folded blanket placed over his head before nursery nurse Kimberley Cookson pinned him down with her knee for seven minutes as part of her effort to get him to sleep at the Fairytales Day Nursery in Dudley, West Midlands in December 2022.
The child was not checked for more than two hours, when the 23-year-old carer finally noticed he was unresponsive.
Cookson, from Dudley, had previously admitted gross negligence manslaughter.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the nursery admitted a single charge of corporate manslaughter and a health and safety offence at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
The nursery’s owner, Deborah Latewood, 55, of Dudley, also admitted a health and safety offence on the basis that she was unaware of what her staff were doing, but should have been.
Sentencing Cookson this afternoon, Mr Justice Choudhury said CCTV from the nursery showed ‘shocking’ images of repeated instances of ‘rough handling’ and sleep practices which contravened relavant guidance and the nursery’s own sleep policy.
The judge said Noah had been ‘totally smothered by the sleeping bag and blanket’ and told Cookson that Noah’s suffering ‘ought to have been obvious’ to her.
Sentencing her to 40 months in prison, he said Cookson would serve up to 40 per cent of the sentence in custody before being released on licence.
The nursery was fined £240,000 and told to pay £56,000 costs.
Latewood was sentenced to six months in custody, but the sentence was suspended for two years after a recent change in sentencing guidelines.
The court heard Latewood pleaded guilty four days after a presumption under the Sentencing Act 2026 came into force last month. The judge said that Section One of the act introduces a presumption that a sentence of 12 months or less must be suspended, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
MPs passed the measure as part of Labour’s attempt to end the population crisis in prisons.
The judge said he would ‘ordinarily’ have sent Latewood to jail, telling her: ‘It seems to me that but for your neglect, Miss Cookson would not have engaged in the conduct that she did.’
Earlier, a court heard the sleeping environment in the nursery – which included ‘hazardous’ soft bedding around the child’s head – was ‘exceptionally dangerous’.
Noah ‘would have become exhausted and overheated, as well as struggling to breathe,’ John Elvidge KC, prosecuting, added.
Cookson’s barrister Rashad Mohammed, said in mitigation on Thursday that she ‘says she deserves to be punished’.
The court heard Noah’s parents had been attracted to the nursery’s good rating by Ofsted, but were actively looking for alternative childcare arrangements at the time of Noah’s death as a result of staffing changes.
On the day he died his mother, Masi Sibanda, told a friend that they were taking him out of the nursery.
‘Tragically, the events of that day meant that Mr and Mrs Sibanda would never see Noah alive again’, the judge said.
Members of the Noah’s family were in tears in court on Thursday as a victim impact statement from Mrs Sibanda, was read out in which she said staff had played ‘Russian roulette’ with her ‘beautiful’ son’s life.
Mrs Sibanda said she had a ‘naive trust in the nursery’ and will forever feel guilty at ‘knowing I handed him over to people who killed him.’
She said staff used ‘excessive’ force on her son ‘as if he was a felon’. She said he died ‘alone, scared and in pain’ and added: ‘I can’t forgive myself and cannot forgive (the) defendants.’
She said of Cookson, who sobbed in court through some of the hearing: ‘Why did she hate our son so much… from what I’ve seen she simply does not care, she treated him worse than an animal.
‘Behind closed doors, they were playing Russian Roulette with our children.’
In his own victim impact statement, Noah’s father, Thulani Sibanda, said his son died due to the ‘gross negligence of someone who was trusted to care for him’.
He said: ‘Noah deserved to live, he deserved to be protected and we deserved to watch him grow up.’
The court Cookson was 20 at the time of Noah’s death and earned £15,000-a-year working full-time at the nursery.
The court heard a police investigation following the death found evidence of ‘systemic’ failures at the nursery, with a review of CCV showing ‘habitual’ practices of children being swaddled, placed face down and restrained in the fortnight leading up to Noah’s death.
Mr Elvidge said the nursery failed to ensure that staff were adequately supervised and said nobody else on duty in the baby room, where children up to the age of two were looked after, had challenged Cookson on her treatment of Noah.
The court heard the toddler, who attended the nursery in Bourne Street five days a week, had been seen tightly wrapped and ‘struggling’ over an hour before he was eventually left to sleep by Cookson.
At one point Cookson saw him struggling but did not check on him, the prosecutor said, before she eventually picked him up roughly.
Another video played in court on Thursday showed Noah crying, with nobody reacting.
As the footage continued, Noah was seen thrashing around while Cookson attended to other children, before she then changed his position in a bid to force him to sleep, again wrapping him tightly and placing him in the teepee. She then placed her knee across him to pin him down.
After around seven minutes, when Noah had stopped wriggling, she removed her knee and walked away.
Between 1.12pm and 3.13pm, when Cookson checked on Noah and realised he was unresponsive, he was not seen to move.
Once Cookson realised there was a problem, an ambulance was called and staff began resuscitation attempts.
The toddler was transferred by ambulance to hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 4.15pm, the court was told.
Cookson told police she had learnt how to wrap and swaddle babies at the nursery, and thought it was ‘fine’ to cover children’s faces as long as airflow was not restricted.
She said she had no formal training in how to put children down to sleep, and that Noah liked to be wrapped and usually fell asleep instantly.
Cookson’s barrister, Mr Mohammed, said she ‘bitterly regrets’ what happened.
He told the court she had no previous convictions and ‘did not intend to cause (Noah) any harm.’
But he said there were ‘wholesale failures by all the staff at the nursery that day and not just Miss Cookson’.
A failure to adequately train staff saw Cookson ‘learning on the job…and what she was learning was just wrong’, he added.
Dominic Kay KC, representing the nursery, which opened in 2003, acknowledged that the Sibandas had ‘trusted their child to Fairytales and this should never have happened’.
He said a ‘culture’ of ill-treatment seemed to have developed amongst some staff in the baby room in the weeks leading up to Noah’s death, and that management had failed to stop that.
Mr Kay said the nursery had a safe sleep policy but accepted that sleeping pods should not have been used. He said it could be inferred that the decline in standards coincided with Latewood spending more time at a second site the business had.
Mark Balysz KC, for Latewood, read a letter from the mother-of-one in which she told the court of her sorrow. She said it had been her ‘life-long dream’ to set up a nursery after working at other sub-standard businesses in the past.
He said that she was ‘shocked and dismayed by the conduct of staff’ on the footage disclosed by police.
She was not present at the nursery on the day of Noah’s death.
The court heard Ofsted had last inspected the nursery in early 2022 and it was rated as ‘good’.
However, the report did not inspect the sleeping arrangements of the children.
Noah’s parents had been attracted to the nursery’s good rating by Ofsted, but were actively looking for alternative childcare arrangements at the time of Noah’s death as a result of staffing changes.
The couple welcomed the birth of their daughter just ten days after Noah’s funeral.
The court heard Fairytales Day Nursery has no assets and went into liquidation after it was ordered to close following the death.
Alex Johnson, Senior Specialist Prosecutor within the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime Division, said the case ‘represents every parent’s worst nightmare’.
He said Noah ‘lost his life as a result of reckless and dangerous sleeping practices which posed an obvious and serious risk of harm’.
Outside court, Detective Inspector Carla Thompson read out a statement on behalf of Mr and Mrs Sibanda which they said: ‘We cannot comprehend what could justify treating a barely walking child the way Noah was treated.
The bereaved couple added: ‘We never imagined that a vulnerable person, let alone the most infant, fragile child, could be in danger in a place designed for safety, learning and protection.’
