A 19-year-old Richmond man has been convicted in Louisa County of soliciting sex from a minor. Robert Cox was arrested in October in a Louisa undercover operation aimed at sexual predators using the Internet to solicit children. Cox is a former employee of a day care center in Henrico County, according to Louisa Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Garrett, who did not name the center.

The owner of a private home on the Eastern Shore targeted by a drug task force has surrendered documents allowing her to operate as a regulated child-care facility. The state Department of Social Services said yesterday that Pandora Kellam voluntarily surrendered operating agreements with the state Wednesday afternoon that allowed her to keep up to five children in her home near Eastville.

A drug task force turned up marijuana plants and 10 weapons, including an illegal sawed-off shotgun, at an Eastern Shore day-care center last week, authorities said. Virginia State Police said yesterday that a resident of the private residence near Eastville, Deandre L. Dunton, 30, was arrested last week on two drug charges and a weapons charge.

Children have been left unattended in licensed day-care center vehicles at least 11 times in the past 2½ years in Virginia in procedural lapses similar to last week’s tragedy in Richmond, state regulators say. The Virginia Department of Social Services recorded 11 cases since January 2007 that violated the agency’s licensing code requiring day-care center staff to verify that all children have been removed from a vehicle at the end of any trip.

Authorities are sorting out the details surrounding the tragic end of Andrew Joseph Johnson, who baked to death in a van several days ago after he was left alone in it by an employee of the Yellow Brick Road Day Care & Learning Center. The employee, Keishawn Whitfield, has been charged with felony child neglect. Investigators say Whitfield thought he had dropped the toddler off at the day-care center along with other children before returning home and going to sleep. It seems impossible in the abstract to do such a thing—how could anyone forget a child in a vehicle? But people do—even parents.

Judge sets bond at $20,000 for Keishawn L. Whitfield, an employee of the Yellow Brick Road Day Care & Learning Center in North Richmond, charged with felony child neglect.

Tuckaway Child Development and Early Education Centers has acquired Hanover Montessori School and plans to offer Montessori classes in all five of its day-care centers in the Richmond area.

Defense contractor BAE Systems says it will no longer conduct the kind of testing that caused a small explosion that damaged and forced the evacuation at a neighboring daycare center.