For leaving a toddler to die in a hot van, Miami daycare operator gets jail time

A former Miami daycare owner will spend four months in jail and 10 years on probation for leaving a 2-year-old toddler in a hot van to die in the sweltering heat.

Karen Julissa Aviles on Tuesday pleaded no contest to manslaughter, six years after the death of 2-year-old Angel Matute-Chavez outside Vision of Life Academy in Miami. As part of the plea deal, a judge found her guilty and sentenced her to the jail term.

It was in September 2016 that Aviles, 41, picked up Angel, his 8-year-old brother and a group of other children, arriving at the academy on the 4100 block of Northwest Seventh Avenue. The daycare was not licensed to transport children.

When the van arrived at the day care, Aviles told police, she rushed out because she was late to a meeting and asked another employee to get the children. But Angel somehow stayed inside the van, even though his older brother made it inside the building. When an employee found Angel inside the van, it was almost 4 p.m., more than six hours after he’d been left inside the van.

Paramedics found Angel, bleeding from the nose and ears. An autopsy determined that he died from heatstroke.

“These years would have been the most beautiful of our lives,” his mother, Miriam Chavez, said in a letter read to Circuit Judge Laura Stuzin. “The emptiness Angel left in our lives has been impossible to fill ... Angel’s siblings are not the same children they used to be when Angel was with us.”

Transporting children to and from day care is supposed to be strictly regulated. State regulations require drivers to keep logs detailing when each child gets in and out of the vehicle, as well as logs attesting to visual inspections after the kids are all dropped off. Under the regulations, a second employee is also supposed to “conduct a physical inspection and visual sweep of the vehicle to ensure that no child is left in the vehicle.”

Under the plea deal, Aviles will not be allowed to work caring or supervising children, prosecutor Jenisse Grace told the judge.

Aviles’ defense attorney, Simon Steckel, said she was not admitting guilt but the plea deal was less risky than trial.

“She maintains she is innocent despite the plea agreement,” Steckel said.

This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 9:47 AM.