Daycare investigation finds 26 kids behind ‘false wall’ in basement, Colorado cops say
A Colorado Springs daycare’s license is suspended — and its owner is under investigation — after officers discovered 26 kids behind a “false wall” in a basement, according to police.
Colorado Springs police went to Play Mountain Place on Thursday just after noon “to assist a licensing regulatory agency in the investigation of a home day care facility housing too many children,” according to police blotter records.
Police said in a news release on the investigation that the welfare check came after Colorado’s Department of Human Services asked local authorities Wednesday to help investigate complaints that the facility was caring for more children than its license permitted.
At first, officers didn’t find any children at the facility, police said. That’s when officers tried talking with the facility’s owner at her home, which is on the same property.
Carla Faith, the 58-year-old who runs Play Mountain Place, “refused to cooperate with officers,” according to police — but officers “could hear the noises of children coming from her home.”
Police said officers then “found a false wall that led to the home’s basement.”
Officers walked down the stairs, where they found two adults with 26 children — all of them under 3 years old — in the finished basement, according to police.
“Officers immediately began working with DHS to release the children back to their parents,” police said.
Police said three adult daycare workers were arrested on misdemeanor child abuse charges relating to neglect, but those “charges were canceled by detectives pending further investigation.”
Faith wasn’t arrested “as detectives pursue appropriate charges,” police said.
“The Colorado Department of Human Services Childcare Licensing received a complaint on a licensed childcare home on November 13th, 2019 and investigated the same day,” DHS said in a statement released by police Thursday. “Based on initial findings, the Department is immediately suspending the license.”
KRDO reports that the investigation “isn’t Faith’s first run-in with legal trouble over daycares,” citing a Los Angeles Times report from 1998 revealing that California authorities shut down daycares she used to run in the state.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 7:15 PM with the headline "Daycare investigation finds 26 kids behind ‘false wall’ in basement, Colorado cops say."
