MIAMI – A 2-year-old boy who died in December about a week after another toddler who attended the same day care in Miami also died of meningitis, the Miami Herald reported Wednesday.
Attorney Todd Michaels, who is representing the boy's family, told the Herald that the boy, who he declined to name, died in Belize on Dec. 10.
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He said an autopsy from the country confirmed that the boy died of meningitis, but he said the Florida Department of Health never contacted him about its investigation into the YWCA Carol Glassman Donaldson Childcare Center.
Mara Gambineri, a spokeswoman for the health department, said the investigation into the center closed on Jan. 31.
"After repeated attempts to obtain information from Belize to no avail, we have closed the investigation," Gambineri told the Herald in an email.
Gambineri said the health department attempted to contact the boy’s family and health officials in Belize to no avail.
Although the investigation has closed, she said the agency could reopen the investigation after reviewing the documents from the family’s attorney.
Health officials confirmed that a 22-month-old boy who attended the day care, Connor Mincey, died Dec. 3 of pneumococcal meningitis.
Connor's parents held a news conference a couple of weeks after his death.
They said they had been given a doctor's note clearing their son to return to school Nov. 21.
For the next week, Connor was back and forth between day care and doctors' visits.
The parents said he was then taken to Nicklaus Children's Hospital on Nov. 28, where he died a couple days later.
"Antibiotics should have been able and would have been able to treat the condition that Connor had," the Mincey family's attorney, Judd Rosen, said.
The health department sent a letter to parents at the day care about the meningitis case four days after Connor died.
The Florida Department of Children and Families conducted a routine inspection Dec. 1 at the day care, just two days before Connor died.
Among the multiple violations noted in DCF's report were that the day care had no quarantine room for sick children.
The day care agreed to close shortly after the two deaths and said they would not to reopen the center until they were cleared by the health department and DCF.
The day care reopened Dec. 26. It remains unclear whether the toddlers contracted meningitis at the day care.