SAN JOSE — A jury returned a guilty verdict Tuesday for a San Jose woman charged with child endangerment after two toddlers drowned in a swimming pool at her Almaden home daycare three years ago, concluding a month-long trial that was preceded by her daughter and co-operator pleading guilty to the same charges.
Shahin Gheblehshenas, 67, of San Jose, was found guilty Tuesday of child endangerment in the drownings deaths of two toddlers at her Almaden home daycare in 2023. (San Jose Police Dept.)
Jurors convicted Shahin Gheblehshenas, 67, of three felony child endangerment counts in the Oct. 2, 2023 drownings of 16-month-old Lilian Hanan, of San Jose, and 18-month-old Payton Cobb, of Hollister, and the near-drowning of a third child who survived after also going into the pool at Gheblehshenas’s home — where she ran Happy Happy Daycare — on Fleetwood Drive.
The parents of the two toddlers who drowned filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Gheblehshenas and Fathizadeh in August alleging that it was the defendants’ negligence that led to children being left unsupervised by the swimming pool. The litigation has been on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case.
Anne Kepner, attorney for the Cobb family, said she was grateful upon hearing about the jury’s decision.
“No verdict is going to help them recover from the loss of their child,” Kepner said Tuesday. “They are appreciative of this process and hope it will prevent another family from experiencing this kind of tragedy.”
Gheblehshenas was not home when the children got into an unsecured backyard swimming pool, but had been accused of negligence for several related actions that morning. Authorities alleged that she went ahead with traveling to a presumed medical appointment despite a daycare employee calling in sick and her daughter, co-defendant Nina Fathizadeh, voicing concern that she could not closely watch all three children on her own.
When Gheblehshenas discovered that her appointment was actually scheduled for the following week, she went to a separate unlicensed daycare that her family ran — instead of heading back to her home to relieve her daughter, authorities said.
Fathizadeh, 43, of San Jose, pleaded guilty Feb. 23 to the three felony child endangerment counts in connection with the pool tragedy and seven separate felony child endangerment counts for transporting children in a vehicle without proper safety restraints.
In the drowning deaths, Fathizadeh was accused of failing to ensure the pool’s safety gate was closed before letting the children into the backyard. The five-foot-tall fence that surrounded the pool was found propped open on the day of the drownings, and prosecutors allege both mother and daughter were aware that Gheblehshenas’s husband would sometimes open the pool gate to water plants, then forget to close it.
An investigation by the San Jose Police Department and district attorney’s office further alleged that Fathizadeh could see the open pool gate when she let the two girls and one boy in her care into the backyard, but she did not close it before going back into the kitchen. She was reportedly out of the view of the children for at least five minutes.
Fathizadeh first found the boy floating in the shallow end of the pool when she went out to check on the children. She pulled him out, called 911 and began CPR. She then woke up her brother, who was asleep elsewhere in the house, before attending to the girls, who were found floating in the deep end of the pool, investigators said.
CPR was administered on both girls, but they were later pronounced dead at a hospital. The women were criminally charged 11 days later; state regulators also suspended the defendants’ daycare license and fined them $11,000.
After her guilty plea, Fathizadeh’s attorney said his client was consistently remorseful about the drownings, and asserted that the pool gate was usually locked, and that Fathizadeh made a “grave assumption” that it was locked that day. The attorney also emphasized Fathizadeh did not live at the home where the daycare operated, and had only briefly turned away from the children to stir oatmeal in the kitchen when they got in the pool.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.