MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Disturbing new details have been released on why a Grand Jury may have indicted a former day care owner on charges of reckless homicide.
Luke Taylor died three days after his first birthday on November 10, 2014.
The autopsy revealed a blanket was wrapped around his neck.
It was an accident, according to the Medical Examiner, at Pamela Barkley’s unlicensed home day care.
Now, the News Channel 3 Investigators have learned Taylor wasn’t the only child that died while under Barkley’s care.
The Department of Human Services confirmed the child’s death with WREG.
It happened on September 19, 2006 when Barkley owned a licensed home day care at the same house.
A 9-1-1 Background Event Chronology report shows “4 mo baby DOA”.
DHS records showed Barkley put the baby in a swing, but when she went to pick him up she realized he wasn’t breathing.
A doctor called it a “textbook case of SIDS” and Barkley assisted the family with the burial.
She voluntarily closed her day care a few months later.
WREG first learned about the previous death after searching through the Department of Children’s Services file on the Taylor case.
An assistant District Attorney mentioned the 2006 death while urging DCS to take a second look at the Taylor case.
She said her office was looking at prosecuting Barkley.
DCS couldn’t prove neglect, but a Grand Jury indicted Barkley for reckless homicide in February of 2016 for Taylor’s death.
“What reckless means in the law basically is knowing that there’s a danger and ignoring it,” District Attorney Amy Weirich told WREG right after the indictment.
She wouldn’t say much, but the DCS file provided more clues.
Despite ruling Taylor’s death an accident, “the medical examiner is called on to decide cause and manner of death, not to decide whether there is a criminal element.”
The file noted the M.E. reportedly had a “hard time understanding how a one year old could do that to themselves.”
There are also questions about who put Taylor down.
It may not have been Barkley.
That’s next to a notation that the person “in charge of baby room used to be cleaning lady.”
The person who called DCS after Taylor’s death told them Barkley’s day care was unlicensed, claimed it had been open for 15 years, and that she kept up to 10 children.
The News Channel 3 Investigators found similar complaints about Barkley dating back to 2001.
One parent said she kept up to 14 children when she was licensed to keep seven.
