SAN JOSE — The parents of two toddlers who drowned in a backyard pool at an Almaden home-based daycare two years ago have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against its mother-daughter operators, who will go before a judge later this month to decide whether their multiple child endangerment charges head to trial.
In the litigation filed July 28 in Santa Clara County Superior Court, the survivors of 16-month-old Lilian Hanan, of San Jose, and 18-month-old Payton Cobb, of Hollister, allege wide-ranging negligence that led to the children being unsupervised at a swimming pool on the premises of Happy Happy Daycare on Fleetwood Drive in San Jose on Oct. 2, 2023.
Shahin Gheblehshenas, 66, and Nina Fathizadeh, 42, have each been charged with three felony child endangerment counts, with the third involving a child who went into the pool but survived. Fathizadeh also faces seven misdemeanor child endangerment counts involving an unrelated incident in which she allegedly transported children without properly restraining them.
Both defendants, who are currently out out of custody on bail, face a scheduled week-long preliminary hearing, set to begin Aug. 25, that will determine if there is sufficient evidence for the charges to proceed toward trial.
The lawsuit, in which the Hanan family is represented by the Sacramento-based law firm Dreyer Babich Buccola Wood Campora and the Cobb family is represented by the San Jose-based firm Needham Kepner & Fish, seeks unspecified economic and non-economic damages for the children’s deaths.
Scott and Josephine Hanan, who adopted Lilian in 2022, said in a statement last week that they were seeking to adopt a second child when she died and that their application was later revoked, casting doubt on whether they can raise children again.
“We lost our daughter, and we lost our future as parents,” the couple said. “We just don’t want this to happen to another family — to have them go through this level of emotional trauma and loss.”
An attorney representing the defendants declined to comment on the lawsuit, and referred to a February 2024 statement released on their behalf saying, “We want to assure the families affected by this tragedy and the community at large that Nina Fathizadeh and Shahin Gheblehshenas are fully committed to cooperating with the ongoing criminal proceedings.”
The investigation by San Jose police and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office determined that there were supposed to be at least two people watching the children, but an employee called in sick that morning. Detectives also found that the gate for a five-foot-tall fence that surrounded the pool — intended to keep the children away — had been propped open.
The criminal charges are based in part on allegations that the defendants were fully aware that Gheblehshenas’ husband was known to open the pool gate to water plants in the yard and would sometimes forget to close it. Fathizadeh allegedly let the two girls and the boy into the backyard; prosecutors allege that she could see the unsecured pool gate but did not make any effort to close it, then then went to the kitchen, out of view of the children, for at least five minutes.
When she went out to check on the children, she found the boy floating in the shallow end of the pool, pulled him out, called 911 and started CPR, according to investigators. But the girls were not tended to until Fathizadeh woke her brother, who was asleep elsewhere in the home, and found the two girls floating in the deep end of the pool. The adults attempted CPR on them before they were taken to a hospital, where they were pronounced dead.
Detectives stated in a probable cause affidavit that Fathizadeh voiced concern to her mother about not being able to sufficiently watch over the children after the employee called in sick, and Gheblehshenas was not expected to be on site because of a medical appointment. The children’s parents did not know the daycare was shorthanded.
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Prosecutors added that even after Gheblehshenas realized that her medical appointment was actually the following week, instead of returning to the Fleetwood Drive home to relieve her daughter, she headed to a separate and unlicensed daycare the family operated.
State regulators suspended the defendants’ daycare license a few days after the deaths and fined them $11,000.
Roger Dreyer, the attorney for the Hanan family, echoed prosecutors in calling the deaths preventable and said the lawsuit is seeking accountability while the court process plays out.
“My clients have waited patiently for the criminal justice system to act, but it has not. This civil lawsuit is the only path left to seek justice — not just for Lillian, but to make sure no other child is put at risk like this again,” Dreyer said in a statement. “This case sends a message to the entire child care industry … Accountability matters — and our goal is to make sure this never happens again.”