Lawsuit: Las Vegas day care worker threw 2-year-old, broke his leg

The parents of a 3-year-old boy have sued a Las Vegas day care, alleging that their son’s leg was broken after he was thrown by an employee in May.

A short video sent Friday to the Las Vegas Review-Journal by the parents’ lawyers depicted a woman picking up the boy, then 2, and throwing him down out of the camera’s view. The woman, Elicia Miller, is named as a defendant, along with the day care, Creme de la Creme, 2836 S. Durango Drive, in the lawsuit filed in August.

Court records show Miller was charged with one count of felony child abuse in June and in October pleaded guilty to attempted child abuse. Miller is due in court for sentencing on March 14.

“It’s tragic anytime a child is injured, especially in the hands of someone that they trust like a day care worker or teacher,” said Adam Ellis, one of the attorneys representing the family.

The video was taken the morning of May 12. The boy’s father received a call from the day care to pick up the child because there had been an incident and that the child would not stop crying. He arrived to find his son with an ice pack on his leg and was given an incident report. A staff member said the child had been pushed down and injured by another child. The parents alleged the facts included in the incident report were untrue, according to the complaint.

“That delayed the care that they were able to give their child,” Ellis said.

The boy was taken to an urgent care center where he was “whimpering, crying, and screaming non-stop, and appeared to be in excruciating pain, especially while moving,” the complaint read. An X-ray show the boy’s femur was “severely fractured,” and he was taken University Medical Center for further treatment.

“They actually questioned the mom about potential abuse because of this,” Ellis said. “They thought the father was abusing the kids.”

Later that day, the father asked to watch surveillance footage to see how his son had been hurt and was shown a video clip. The day care refused to show any other footage and when asked if other complaints had been made about Miller, he was told, “none substantiated,” according to the complaint.

The parents’ goal is to increase accountability through pushing for more cameras in classrooms, Ellis said.

“There’s not a time machine that’ll take them back to the day before to make everything preventable, but what they really want is to make sure that this never happens again to another child,” Ellis said.

Ellis said the parents are optimistic about their child’s recovery and that he has completed physical therapy.

“The parents have actually had a really hard time keeping him in day cares because he’s traumatized by the incident,” Ellis said. “He’s so young, he can’t speak about it, doesn’t understand it, but he’s certainly having behavioral issues because of it.”

Attorneys for the day care and Miller could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Contact David Wilson at dwilson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @davidwilson_RJ on Twitter.