San Jose day care co-owner found guilty in 2023 drowning deaths of 2 toddlers

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — A jury found a San Jose day care co-owner guilty in the 2023 drowning deaths of two toddlers on Tuesday.

The mother, Shahin Gheblehshenas, maintained she is not guilty and went to trial. The verdict was reached on Tuesday.

The mother-daughter co-owners of “Happy Happy Daycare” faced felony child endangerment charges and other misdemeanors.

The daughter, Nina Fathizadeh, plead guilty in February.

With her plea, Fathizadeh will be sentenced in May – and faces more than 20 years in prison.

In October 2023, investigators say two 1-year-olds, Payton Cobb and Lilian Hannan, slipped through a propped-open gate that separated a play area from a pool at the home day care.

They were all found in the water.

Only one toddler survived.

The Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office said Gheblehshenas went to another unlicensed day care that day.

She left four children with Fathizadeh.

According to the investigation report, Gheblehshenas’s husband propped open the pool gate with a clothes hanging rack and did not close it.

While Fathizadeh was making breakfast, she left one child in a crib and three others in the backyard area unsupervised.

Investigators said that five minutes later, she discovered one of the children floating in the pool.

She performed CPR. Her brother found the two other children floating unconscious in the pool’s deep end.

“The defendants had one job most important, above all, which was to return them to their parents safely,” said Deputy District Attorney O’Brian Kenney, “They did not do that.”

“They trusted these people, they not only were responsible for these children, they were being paid for it,” one woman told ABC7 News at an earlier court appearance. She did not give her name but said she is the grandmother of Payton Cobb.

“Nobody sends kids out into the backyard – three toddlers – to play by themselves,” the grandmother said.

San Jose day care owner pleads guilty in drowning deaths of 2 toddlers