Evansville Daycare Closed; Pending Investigation

A Tri-State daycare is closed and Evansville police say Fireside Chapel Daycare is now under investigation. This all comes after a reported incident inside the daycare.

A notification was sent to parents Thursday from someone who works at the daycare.

Photos recently started circulating on social media showing children with unexplained injuries. All of them attended Fireside Chapel Daycare. Now Evansville Police are involved and say they are investigating this as a crime.

Nicole Wochaski’s daughter is almost three and has been attending Fireside Chapel Daycare since last January.

She says at first she was impressed with the facility, but all that soon changed.

“Then through the summer she was having really really bad diaper rashes and she never has them at home,” says Nicole Wochaski, former Fireside Chapel parent. “She never had them on the weekends. She never had them when she was in anyone else’s care. It was always when she was at daycare.”

She gave the staff diaper cream, wipes, and diapers to help the issue, but says it got worst.

“It got to the point where it was so bad at one time her whole diaper area was blistered as if her skin was peeling and I was furious,” says Wochaski.

Her daughter also mentioned how she was not allowed to use the bathroom, had been spanked, and even says she woke up alone in a classroom.

Wochaski says she mentioned her concerns to Fireside staff at least a dozen times, but never got anywhere.

So Thursday, she collected her daughter’s things from the daycare.

“But I did go to gather her belongings and when I went into the room that houses all of the cubbies it was about 90 percent empty,” says Wochaski.

Another mom says she cried tears of joy after reading about the daycare closing.

Leslie Young says she dropped her 3-month-old daughter off at Fireside in August and was able to keep an eye on her through an app.

“She was only getting her diaper changed like three times a day and she was there 7:45 a.m to about 4:45 p.m and they’re just feeding her constantly. Way overfeeding her and under-diapering her,” says Leslie Young, former Fireside Chapel parent.

Then the third week Young says she had more problems.

“She was face down into her crib and she had obviously been like that for a while because her head, like her forehead and her nose, both had red marks on them where they had been smashed down against the mattress,” says Young.

Days later, Young found what appeared to be a bite mark on her daughter’s leg. She also says she tried to talk to the staff about her concerns but got nowhere, so she removed her daughter from the facility.

44News has made multiple attempts to reach someone at Fireside Chapel, but have not heard back. State inspection records show the facility did not have any critical violations, but some staff members were hired without ever getting a background check.