Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew C. Carey announced that three former employees of a Highland Park day care center were placed on probationary terms after they were charged with failing to adequately care for a nine-week old boy who died at the facility.
Tanya Choy, 36, of Martinsville was placed on a three-year probationary term known as Pre-Trial Intervention after pleading guilty to a count of endangering the welfare of the child, admitting she placed the infant face-down in a crib at the Above and Beyond Child Care Center on South Third Avenue in Highland Park and failed to check on the welfare of the infant, who died on September 10, 2014.
Her co-workers, Lorie McDermott, 49, of Milltown, and Blanca Jimenez, 61, of Edison, who also had been charged with child endangerment, were admitted to PTI for two years.
Each of the three is required to pay the infant’s family $1,704.01 in restitution to cover some family expenses.
The charges will be dismissed for each of the defendants upon successful completion of the program.
The three were admitted to the program following agreements reached with Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Miralles Walsh. The agreements were approved in New Brunswick by Superior Court Judge Diane Pincus.
The investigation began when Highland Park police were dispatched to the day care center and arrived to find the infant was non-responsive.
Police rushed the infant to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where he was pronounced dead.
Sudden Infant Death was determined to be the cause. A contributing factor was that the infant was placed on his stomach and left unattended for two hours.