Payton McCoy: 4-Month-Old Baby Suddenly Dies At Unlicensed Day Care Center — What Happened?

Payton McCoy was just four months old when he passed away, and even the medical examiner in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, who checked out the little boy’s body, could not figure out what caused the baby to die alone in a bedroom with the door closed, in an unlicensed day care center, while the babysitter tended to the eight other children in her home that day.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” Payton’s distraught father, Jonathan McCoy, told Milwaukee’s WISN-TV News. “I’m lost without him, very lost.”

The baby’s mom, Denise McCoy — who had only recently returned to work after maternity leave — said she just wants to find out “what happened, what happened to my baby.”

So what did happen?

Twyla Will has run her home day care center, Child Care With A Twist, for the past decade. She admits that she does not have a license from the state of Wisconsin — which requires licenses for any facility caring for four or more kids under the age of seven — but says that nothing like this tragedy has ever happened.

The McCoys did not choose Will lightly. They paid out of their pocket for a background check on the caregiver, as well as researching her themselves online. Will has a clean record, even though her facility has no license.

The medical examiner’s report said that Will put Payton in swaddling, then placed him on his back — as she says she always did — on a “Snuggle Me” cushion. The cushion was on top of an adult twin bed.

She then closed the bedroom door. That was at about 1 p.m. on June 30 — the last time Will, or anyone, saw the baby alive.

When Will checked on him an hour later, little Payton was lying with his face against the wall, but part of his face was over a three-inch gap between the bed and the wall. She called police, and when they got there, they found Payton McCoy with no pulse. The baby had stopped breathing.

But the medical examiner’s report found no trauma to the child. Toxicology tests are underway, but no results have come back yet. The report also noted that Denise McCoy asked Will not to place Payton on the “Snuggle me” cushion, but no reason was given as to why not.

But another Milwaukee news station, WITI Fox 6, reported that early indications pointed to suffocation and that the baby displayed a contusion on his head.

Police said that Will’s home was well-kept and well-organized. The kids had plenty of toys to keep them busy.

Payton’s parents say they don’t feel that Twyla Will did anything deliberately that may have caused Payton’s death and they are not angry at her. But they say that the caregiver had too many kids under her care that day.

“She didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. It was an accident,” said Denise McCoy. “But I think it could have been more precautious of his sleeping environment, where he was sleeping. He shouldn’t have been unsupervised.”

The case is far less clear cut than a case of obvious abuse, such as the case babysitter in Idaho who was convicted last week of causing severe injuries to a baby by shaking the child violently, as reported in the story at this link.

Nonetheless, police have charged Twyla Will with child neglect in the death of Payton McCoy, saying that “she was not truthful about times she checked on the infant and that she possibly was caring for too many children,” the medical examiner’s report said.

[Image: WISN Screen Grab]