A mother has condemned a nursery worker for leaving her 14-month-old boy to die ‘alone, scared and in pain’ after he suffocated while staff tried to make him fall asleep.
Noah Sibanda died after the incident in 2022, having been wrapped in a sleeping bag designed for camping, laid face down and restrained at a nursery with exceptionally dangerous sleeping practices for infants, a court heard.
Fairytales Day Nursery Limited in Dudley, its director and a staff member were being sentenced at Wolverhampton Crown Court this afternoon over the death of Noah.
A victim impact statement read out from Noah’s mother Masi Sibanda said today: ‘Since his death, there has not been a single day I haven’t regretted being alive when he is not. My guilt comes from knowing I handed him over to people who killed him.’
Ms Sibanda compared the ‘excessive’ force used on him to that used in prisons, adding: ‘I can’t forgive myself and cannot forgive [the] defendants. Guilt lives with me every time I look at my daughter. Why did [Cookson] hate our son so much?
‘From what I’ve seen she simply does not care, she treated him worse than an animal. They are the reason he died… my child died alone, scared and in pain.’
She added that she wondered whether Noah’s treatment was due to his skin colour, adding: ‘Behind closed doors, they were playing Russian Roulette with our children.
‘Last time I saw and held my child was in hospital, shortly after I was told nothing more could be done. He wouldn’t open his eyes when I whispered to him that it was time to go home.’
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 in a three-season sleeping bag designed for camping.
Nursery practitioner Kimberley Cookson, 23, admitted gross negligence manslaughter in relation to her actions in trying to make the toddler sleep on December 9, 2022.
Last month, Fairytales Day Nursery Limited admitted one count of corporate manslaughter and a Health and Safety at Work Act offence.
Director and business owner Deborah Latewood, 55, also admitted a Health and Safety at Work Act offence on the basis that she did not know – but should have known – children were being put down to sleep in a dangerous way.
Prosecutors said the incident, which was captured on CCTV at the nursery, saw Noah tightly wrapped in the sleeping bag with a blanket over his head and laid face down to sleep by Cookson.
She is said to have restrained him with her knee for seven minutes before walking away when the child finally appeared to have gone to sleep.
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.
Rashad Mohammed, defending Cookson, who had no previous convictions, said she ‘bitterly regrets’ what happened and admits she deserves to be punished.
He told Wolverhampton Crown Court: ‘Her motivation that day was to try and put Noah to sleep.
‘She did not intend to cause him any harm.’
But Mr Mohammed 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 and staff had been trained trained, but it had clearly not been effective with regard to sleeping practices, he sai
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 and added that her personal and professional life had collapsed as a result of Noah’s death.
Latewood had been forced to sell her home and now had large debts, the court heard.
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 due to 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.
The case was adjourned until tomorrow afternoon when Mr Justice Choudhury will sentence Cookson, Latewood and the nursery.
