The parents of a toddler in Palmerston North are calling for better safety practices in preschools after the boy died in November last year.
Ricardo Miranda and Beaudene Wi say their twenty-month old son Lorenzo suffered a brain bleed after a suspected fall at the Little Monkeys Preschool.
Lorenzo was found in a distressed state lying on his back on a lino floor near a large table. No one saw him fall and the incident wasn’t reported to his parents.
But on the way home they noticed something was wrong when Lorenzo stopped breathing in the car.
“Two streets after leaving the (preschool) driveway, I looked in the rear vision mirror and he wasn’t breathing,” says Beaudene Wi. “He was a horrible green colour”.
The couple rushed Lorenzo to Palmerston North Hospital where doctors struggled to diagnose his condition.
“We went to the hospital with no clue of what could be wrong with him when we could’ve gone in with some sort of answer that he had fallen,” says Ricardo Miranda.
Lorenzo’s parents say surgery to relieve pressure off his brain wasn’t enough to save their son, and he died.
The Ministry of Education says it’s satisfied the preschool teachers responded appropriately but his parents aren’t satisfied.
“We know it’s an accident. We know there is no justice for Lorenzo- nothing’s ever going to bring him back or fix our hurt,” says Beaudene, “We just want answers for why there were decisions made that resulted in this and we don’t want anyone to dodge that responsibility”.