Lynn family files suit in day-care fall

LYNN – The family of a 2-year-old Lynn boy who fell from the second-story porch of a home day-care center last summer and crashed head first into the cement has filed a lawsuit against the day-care operators and owners.Salem attorney John Yasi said Kelvin Sholola suffered severe injuries in the fall, including a brain injury and a fractured bone in his forehead, and will likely suffer lifelong developmental issues because of the incident.”Frankly, because of his age and the location of his injury, these two things do suggest it’s going to lead to permanent cognitive difficulties,” Yasi said.The lawsuit alleges that day-care operator Lucilia Guerrero, who was licensed to operate a home day-care facility at 16 West Green St., Lynn, at the time of the incident on Aug. 8, left Kelvin, who was 21 months old at the time, his twin sister and two other siblings unattended.Kelvin fell from the second-floor porch of the home, owned by Carlos Noyola, because of “rotted wooden slats and insufficient protective barricading,” according to the lawsuit.Yasi said the children were allowed to go out on the porch even though they were forbidden under the terms of the home’s state license to have the kids out there.”We allege that they were improperly in that area and she was also not supervising them,” Yasi said.”It seems, respectfully, that she was horrifically negligent and reckless,” Yasi said.Neither Guerrero nor Noyola could be reached for comment Tuesday.Yasi said Kelvin was “comatose for several days” after the incident and is now out of the hospital.”But he’s in an early intervention program for young people who suffer head trauma,” Yasi said. “It was horrible, there’s awful photographs of this beautiful young boy.”Dena Papanikolaou, spokesperson for the Mass. Office of Early Education and Care, said Tuesday Guerrero “ended up surrendering her license after the incident.”State officials did not ban Guerrero from holding a day-care license, but Papanikolaou stressed that “if she re-applied her past history would be taken into account.”She said Guerrero was in violation of several regulations, including the fact she was allowing the children to go out on the porch.Papanikolaou acknowledged, however, that home day-care providers are not required to carry liability insurance on their home, something Yasi said he was “shocked to discover.””We don’t require it by state regulations because it is often cost prohibitive,” she said. “It’s not unique, it’s a national issue, some states require it and some don’t.”She said state officials focus more on “reducing the risk of injuries to children,” and have multiple regulations that a home day-care provider must adhere to.”We do have a long list,” she said. “This provider was in violation of several.”Yasi said Guerrero does have liability insurance and he hopes that his client, Moriamo Sanni, Kelvin’s mother, will be able to win a judgment that will help her pay for her son’s medical bills and ongoing care and treatment.”She is the mother of these four children and as a certified nursing assistant is doing her best to cope with the tragedy of the situation, a small part of which is the mounting medical bills,” Yasi said.The Salem attorney said Kelvin was just starting to talk when the accident happened.”He was just in the early stages of communication before this happened,” he said. “There’s been an interruption of that development and a loss of his ability to communicate verbally, according to his mother.”Kelvin has a twin sister and they were “developing very similarly,” before the incident.Yasi said his client was referred to the day care by a Lynn agency.