Boy who may have wandered away from daycare dies after fall from building

BOSTON – A two-year-old boy who cried when he was taken to a daycare centre in an apartment building Wednesday morning apparently wandered away and fell from the building’s roof to his death, a city councillor said.

Councillor Tito Jackson, who represents the neighbourhood where the fall occurred, said at the scene that the boy may have been left unattended at the first-floor daycare facility and climbed four floors to the roof.

“Sadly, part of our future is gone today,” Jackson told the Boston Globe. “That is something that weighs heavily on the hearts and minds of everybody here.”

Police officers found the boy on the pavement behind the building at about 10 a.m., Supt-in-Chief William Gross said. The boy was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Police and the district attorney’s office said they were investigating the circumstances. State child welfare officials also were investigating.

Family members identified the boy as Daylan Walker. His grandmother Lucretia Rivera told the Globe through a Spanish interpreter that he cried when she left him at the daycare centre, in the Dorchester neighbourhood.

“My only grandson, the light of this house,” Rivera said. “Where was I to save you from all these dangers? … I would have rather died myself instead of him.”

Daylan’s mother, Leonella Rivera, told WHDH-TV he’d been attending the daycare for about two weeks. She said the daycare texted her a picture of him at about 9 a.m.

“I want justice for my son,” she said. “This death of my son cannot just stay like that. We need to find out what really happened.”

The Globe said a woman listed in state records as the licensed operator of a daycare centre in the building, Marisol Rondon-Ramos, declined to comment by phone, saying she was talking with police. A published telephone listing for her could not immediately be found.

Area resident Nora Ramos told the Globe she has left her grandchildren with Rondon-Ramos, her sister-in-law, and called her “a very responsible person.”