A jury found a San Jose daycare co-owner guilty on a charge related to the 2023 deaths of two toddlers, who drowned in a backyard pool.

Jurors convicted Shahin Gheblehshenas, 67, of felony child endangerment on Tuesday, according to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office. Her 43-year-old daughter, Nina Fathizadeh, pleaded guilty to the same charges in February. 

The two women co-owned Happy Happy Daycare, where two 1-year-old girls drowned in October 2023. A 2-year-old boy was pulled from the pool in critical condition but survived.  

“These defendants had the ultimate responsibility to care for these little ones and they criminally failed,” Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “These small children tragically paid for this inattention and incompetence with their lives. We can’t bring them back. All we can do is pray for their families to find some peace in the knowledge that there will be accountability.” 

On the day of their deaths, Gheblehshenas had left the daycare operated at her home, for a separate, unlicensed daycare at her daughter’s home, investigators said. Another employee called in sick that day, leaving Fathizadeh alone with four children at the daycare and a fifth on the way. 

Fathizadeh was making breakfast just before 9 a.m., investigators said, when she let three of the children out into a patio play area and out of her sight. The district attorney’s office said that the gate to the pool had a lock but was propped open, which neither owner had checked before letting the children outside. 

When Fathizadeh came into the backyard “several minutes” later, she saw the 2-year-old boy floating in the pool, prosecutors said. Her brother, who had arrived at the home, found the two girls in the water, while Fathizadeh attempted CPR. The girls were later pronounced dead. 

Both women face more than a decade in prison for the child endangerment charges. 

Fathizadeh also faces nine additional years in prison after pleading guilty to “reckless driving with seven unsecured toddlers on a field trip outing from the daycare,” investigators said. 

State officials shut down the daycare days after the drowning.