{"id":25112,"date":"2013-07-19T23:36:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T03:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=25112"},"modified":"2013-07-19T23:37:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-20T03:37:39","slug":"daycare-owner-bonds-out-of-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/07\/daycare-owner-bonds-out-of-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"Daycare Owner Bonds Out Of Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_25113\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25113\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-25113\" title=\"smith\" src=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/smith-300x188.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"188\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/smith-300x188.png 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/smith.png 376w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-25113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Melissa Smith Posted Bond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The owner of a Lehigh Acres daycare where a two-year-old boy drowned made her first appearance in court Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Melissa Smith was running an in-home daycare, when a little boy in her care drowned.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s report, Christian Byrd\u00a0drowned<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>in a kiddie pool in Smith&#8217;s backyard.<\/p>\n<p>Smith\u00a0turned herself in\u00a0Thursday night, with her attorney by her side.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The judge charged Smith with negligent homicide or aggravated manslaughter of a child, active physical injury to a child and 3 counts of child neglect.<\/p>\n<p>The state asked for $100,000 bond for the manslaughter and $10,000 for each child neglect count.<\/p>\n<p>In an attempt to petition a lower bond, Smith&#8217;s attorney, Robert Harris, told the judge there is no issue with safety to the community and she has a new job and is not running the daycare anymore.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>It\u2019s a tragic accident. Lightning won&#8217;t strike twice; this is not gonna happen again. There is no reason to think she&#8217;d commit any other crime if this was a crime at all and certainly the fact that she surrendered and is a lifelong resident of the area with roots and ties and children in the area she&#8217;s not going anywhere she&#8217;s gonna face this,<\/em>&#8221; Harris said during the court hearing.<\/p>\n<p>Harris added her family only has $1,500 for bond.<\/p>\n<p>The judge set Smith&#8217;s bond at $15,000 &#8211; $10,000 for manslaughter and $1,500 for each child neglect count.<\/p>\n<p>She was able to post bond today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The owner of a Lehigh Acres daycare where a two-year-old boy drowned made her first appearance in court Friday. Melissa Smith was running an in-home daycare, when a little boy&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}