NEWSBoy, 1, dies at Utah daycare after employee sits on beanbag chair with toddler underneath A young boy suffocated after he crawled underneath a bean bag chair at a daycare center and was subsequently sat on by an employee. A young boy suffocated after he crawled underneath a bean bag chair at a daycare center Thursday and was subsequently sat on by an employee.Police confirmed Friday the child suffocated after crawling under the bean bag chair, which an employee then sat on without realizing the boy was there. A GoFundMe page created on behalf of the victim's family identifies the boy as Leonardo Sanchez, and family says the boy would have turned 2 years old later this month.Danielle Sanchez, Leonardo's mother, says she doesn't understand how the daycare could have lost track of her son and allowed this to happen. She said they hope to view the surveillance footage from the center soon.Sanchez said she isn't personally upset with the employee who sat on the chair, but she said the daycare should have done more to keep track of the children under their care.
KSTU reports that the incident occurred sometime Thursday at West Jordan Child Center. The management at the center released the following statement Friday:"We regret deeply the tragic death of a young toddler at our daycare facility. No words adequately describe the depth of the sorrow we feel. And, of course, we do not pretend to understand how devastating this is for the family. We know the family well, we grieve with them, and we pray that God will provide them the comfort and peace they inevitably will need."The GoFundMe page states the boy's parents and three siblings, "are heartbroken by the loss of their handsome, sweet baby boy."On Saturday, what would have been Leonardo Sanchez’s second birthday, his family will not have the party they had planned. Instead, they will hold a funeral. In a tragedy that unfolded in a matter of minutes at a day-care center in West Jordan, a suburb to the southwest of Salt Lake City, Danielle Sanchez lost her son. “He was a cute bundle of joy,” Sanchez said to Salt Lake City’s Fox 13.
“He brought a lot of love.” /RWdWY3wL8T — FOX 13 News Utah (@fox13) September 10, 2016 Sanchez left Leonardo at West Jordan Child Center on Sept. 8. It would mark the last moment she saw her son alive. Around noon, the toddler was playing with other children at the center — not unusual for a boy who, according to his mother, was always the life of the party. He crept beneath a bean bag chair at the day-care center to hide, according to West Jordan police who later reviewed security camera footage from that day. An employee of the center, seemingly unaware of Leonardo’s whereabouts, then sat on top of the chair. Why the employee did not notice Leonardo, or the child’s apparent absence from the room, is unclear. [Toddler who died a ‘painful, horrible death’ may have been placed in a freezer, officials say] “I’m just confused,” Sanchez said to NBC affiliate KSL. “I’m so confused on how you don’t know where my kid is. How do you not feel him? How do you not hear him scream?”
She said that police told her that, for several minutes, the employee sat on the chair and read to other children. Sgt. Joe Monson, with the West Jordan police, called the incident a tragic accident. Police say Leonardo was under the chair for up to 15 minutes before the day-care center noticed he was missing. He suffocated beneath the chair and was discovered unconscious. Responders attempted to resuscitate the toddler at the day care, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. He was pronounced dead at Salt Lake City’s Primary Children’s Hospital later that night. [After deaths of three toddlers, Ikea recalls millions of dressers] On Friday, Dan Sanchez, the boy’s father, told KUTV that the day-care needed to change its practices and be held accountable. “We regret deeply the tragic death of a young toddler at our day care facility. And, of course, we do not pretend to understand how devastating this is for the family,” West Jordan Child Center said in a statement Friday through its attorney Barry Johnson.
As Johnson told KSL: “We know the family well, we grieve with them, and we pray that God will provide them the comfort and peace they inevitably will need.” [‘We are devastated,’ family says of toddler killed in alligator attack at Disney resort] The day-care center had two violations in the previous five years, according to a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health’s child-care licensing program; in one instance, children were left unsupervised. As of Friday, no charges had been filed against the unnamed employee. Tom Hudachko, with the Utah health department, told The Washington Post early Tuesday that a health inspector was still collecting information for her report. This post has been updated.At the headquarters of the McCann agency in Manhattan, the battle for the future of the advertising industry is being waged with piped-in electronic music and employee-brewed beer.Young professionals, balancing Apple laptops on their knees, drape themselves over space-age chairs near a cafe that sells fresh juice and subsidized snacks.
On one floor, plants cover walls, making the office look like a jungle. Elsewhere is a Ping-Pong table.The young and the creative have been the engine that drove the advertising industry for decades. But those who once flocked to the business with dreams of making the next standout television commercial are no longer drawn to the industry in the same way. Some view advertising as stodgy — who wants to make a 30-second TV commercial when everyone they know is cutting the cord? — and some are lured by the riches and prestige of the technology industry.The result is that even storied agencies like McCann, which has produced campaigns such as the 1971 “Hilltop” ad for Coca-Cola, now find themselves desperate for young people at the moment when the traditional advertising industry is struggling as never before to adapt to a changing media landscape that these same young people are shaping. “The biggest threat — and one of the biggest things that we talk a lot about — is not only attracting but retaining young talent because there are so many more options,” said David Droga, the creative chairman and founder of the agency Droga5.
“We’ve lost people to Facebook. We’ve lost people to Google; we’ve lost people to Apple.” To enhance their appeal, many agencies are trying to make themselves look less like Madison Avenue and more like the start-ups and tech companies that are now dipping into the same talent pool. Cue the employee happy hours, table tennis and free snacks. But the advertising industry faces much deeper issues that cannot be fixed with cosmetic changes.Cool new technologies like virtual reality have imperiled the art of the television commercial, which is still, in many ways, the bread and butter of advertising agencies. The proliferation of online ads has made advertising anathema. And money provides little incentive: Last year, the average salary for entry-level employees at agencies was about $35,500, according to the 4A’s, an industry trade group. About 25 percent of the industry makes less than $50,400 a year.“Beanbags and softball matches and a cool Twitter handle doesn’t make young people want to work at your office,” Mr. Droga said.
To attract young people, he added, advertising agencies need to produce exciting work again, which many have stopped doing.Perhaps just as important, the advertising industry seems unable to shake the perception that it is stuck in the past. In a recent lawsuit that has shaken up the business, a woman accused the chief executive of J. Walter Thompson, one of the oldest agencies in the world, of rampant racist and sexist behavior, describing comments and scenes that seemed straight out of the 1960s “Mad Men” era. The lawsuit has raised questions about gender and racial diversity and has prompted the industry to acknowledge longstanding problems with its culture.Even as many agency executives insist that their companies are still the best place for creative minds to shine, they are finding it more difficult to maintain their ranks. Turnover at advertising agencies is higher than in competitive industries like technology and management consulting, and the gap increased 10 percent in the last year, according to a study from LinkedIn and the 4A’s.
A lot is at stake: If agencies cannot recruit and retain top young talent, the craft of traditional advertising — an important part of culture for better or worse — could disappear.“We have to fill the pipeline with young talent,” said Tony Weisman, chief executive in North America for the agency DigitasLBi. If agencies fail to recruit and keep top young employees, he said, “We’re going to become archaic.” Losing young talent is a problem other industries face as well. Established news organizations are losing people to relatively new outfits like Vice and BuzzFeed. Investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have made sweeping changes to their junior-banker programs in part because ambitious college graduates were turning to Silicon Valley.But while Wall Street can match the pay at places like Google and Facebook, advertising agencies cannot. So instead, they are trying to match some of the perks. The creative agency Deutsch offers free snacks and a barista at its New York office and free lunch at its Los Angeles office, moves that Mike Sheldon, the agency’s chief executive in North America, said were modeled after Google.
The agency also provides yoga classes, boot camp workout classes and wine tastings. The agency Ogilvy & Mather has beers on the first Friday of every month. McCann allows employees to brew their own beer that is then named after clients. One, named for the military contractor Lockheed Martin, is called Stealth Stout.Some agencies are also revamping their offices to look more like start-ups, with open seating plans and plush chairs. The agency BBDO has created a separate space in its New York office, called Xlab, where restless minds can experiment with virtual reality and drones. (In a bit of a twist, BBDO also happens to be behind the General Electric campaign aimed at getting young people to work for the company.)To reinforce that advertising is an actual career rather than a consolation prize or a steppingstone to something better, agencies like Ogilvy & Mather, Deutsch, Droga5 and DigitasLBi are also bolstering their training and mentorship programs.The changes are geared toward attracting and retaining people like Allan Holmes, 29, who joined the agency Leo Burnett in Chicago after graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2011, but now works at Facebook’s Creative Shop, the company’s in-house agency.
He said he was attracted to Facebook, which he joined roughly two years ago, because it had the “same sort of energy” as a start-up. And what got him most excited initially, he said, was his personal connection to the company — he met his girlfriend and best friend on social media. “The platforms mean everything,” he said. In the end, perks may do little to combat the advertising industry’s loss of cachet.“People no longer have that innate desire and that instinctive desire to be in our business,” said Jay Haines, a founder of Grace Blue, a search firm that works with the advertising industry.But that does not mean the advertising agencies are going to stop trying.At IPG Mediabrands — like McCann, a part of Interpublic Group, one of the biggest ad holding companies — the pop hits were already cranked way up on a recent morning. Young employees waited at a coffee bar for lattes and gluten-free pastries. A sign indicated a beer garden. Another, in blue tiles, spelled out “Initiative.”