Philadelphia Daycare Employees Lock 6-Month-Old Girl In Building After Hours

Philadelphia Police have taken New Arisens Childcare Solutions employees in for questioning regarding the incident.

The Banks family from Philadelphia is pushing for repercussions against daycare workers at New Arisens Childcare Solutions in Feltonville, Pennsylvania, after they allegedly locked up the building on Feb. 1 with the family’s baby still inside.

Cameron Banks, the father of 6-month-old Amora, arrived at the North Carolina daycare to pick up his daughter just before 6 p.m. to find that the doors were locked. He told CBS News about the thoughts he had upon finding the doors locked. “Did somebody take her? Did they take her to a police district, or is my baby dead?” he recalled.

Banks was frantic, as the Whitaker Avenue daycare center was supposed to be open until 6 p.m. He began calling all the contact numbers he had to find out where Amora was.

“I tried calling multiple different places,” Banks recalled. “They have another location, and I was getting voicemail. Nobody even knew where she was at.”

After exhausting his resources, he called the police to open up the daycare for him.

“Something was telling me that she’s in here, she’s in here,” Banks recalled. Officers tried to open the gate with the building key, but it jammed, so they called firefighters to cut it open.

Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said, “Police were able to get into the daycare center. It was dark. When they got inside, they found the 6-month-old baby girl in the corner asleep in a car seat.”

Banks remembered how he assumed the worst when the officers came out of the building.

“They walked in and out pretty fast. So I thought they were coming to tell us bad news. But then, they told us she was inside and she was okay. Happy. There was a whole bunch of crying. Just happy.”

“Today was the day of picture day,” Banks told the outlet. “She had on her first Valentine’s Day onesie, her little heart tutu. It was just a relief to see that she was okay.”

Following Amora’s safe return home, police took Banks and some of the daycare employees in for questioning with the department’s Special Victims Unit.

So far, New Arisens has not responded to requests for a statement.