Richmond day-care driver convicted in child’s death

A driver for a Richmond day-care center faces 15 years in prison after being convicted in the death of a 13-month-old boy who was left in a van used by the center on a hot July day.

Keishawn L. Whitfield was convicted yesterday by Richmond Circuit Judge Beverly W. Snukals after a trial that lasted nearly three hours. Whitfield, 24, is to be sentenced Jan. 8, when he could get up to 10 years for involuntary manslaughter and five years for felony child neglect.

Whitfield was the first of two defendants to be tried for the July 6 death of Andrew Johnson. Valerot Whitlow, Whitfield's mother and the owner of the Yellow Brick Road Day Care and Learning Center, faces a single count of felony child neglect.

Whitlow surrendered her state day-care license and closed her facility on Fourth Avenue in the Highland Park neighborhood shortly after the child's death.

Whitfield had been the center's driver for nearly five years, and testimony yesterday indicated he had taken a number of training courses related to his job.

Defense attorney John W. Luxton urged the judge to clear Whitfield on both charges, saying his client's failure to remember the child was in the van for more than six hours was a tragic error but didn't rise to the level of criminal behavior.

"He didn't exercise reasonable care," Luxton said. "But was he grossly negligent?"

The judge sided with prosecutors Mary E. Langer and Julie E. McConnell, who said Whitfield failed to satisfy the duties of his sole job -- to safely drive and deliver children to and from the center.

"I think this case is more than ordinary negligence," Snukals said. "You have an individual here who had a more heightened duty, a more heightened training and a special role."

Whitfield did not take the stand but sat attentively at the defense table during testimony from a group that included Victoria Griffith-Matko, a Richmond police detective who interviewed him extensively after the death.

According to Griffith-Matko, Andrew was the first child Whitfield picked up on his second run on the morning of July 6. Andrew was already strapped into a portable child safety seat, and Whitfield placed it on the bench seat immediately behind his driver's seat and used the seat belt to fasten the safety seat to the bench seat.

It was Andrew's usual spot, and he would typically spend the ride talking to Whitfield and playfully kicking the back of his seat and tugging at his hair.

Whitfield picked up six other children before going to the center and unloading them. He recalled that one of the last things he did before leaving the center was take Andrew's black diaper bag into the building.

From there, Whitfield drove to his family's house in the 2700 block of Garland Avenue, a short distance from the center, and turned off the ringer on his cell phone and went to bed.

Whitfield told Griffith-Matko that when he woke up shortly before 4 p.m. and checked his cell phone, there were five messages from his mother.

It was then that he discovered Andrew was still in the van, strapped into his safety seat, which was still strapped onto the bench seat.

Testimony indicated the air temperature that day was 84 degrees and that the temperature inside the van reasonably could have been expected to go about 40 degrees higher.

Andrew's body temperature was 106 shortly after he was found unresponsive. Whitfield began efforts to revive him, and emergency crews continued those efforts, to no avail.

Griffith-Matko said that when she arrived at the house, Whitfield was in an ambulance, being treated for hand cuts he suffered when he punched a glass door in frustration after rescue workers arrived and took over attempts to revive the child.

Whitfield offered to take a drug test, but Griffith-Matko said police determined that was unnecessary.

Langer noted that there was a log on the bus and another one inside the center for Whitfield to record the number and identity of van passengers, but Whitfield used neither. He elected instead to keep count of the children in his head.

"He clearly is aware -- or at least should have been aware -- of the dire consequences," Langer said. "He completely abandoned Andrew. Andrew has no ability to defend himself. He's an infant strapped in a car seat. And he just sits there -- getting hotter and hotter until he dies."

Contact Joe Macenka at (804) 649-6804 or .