A Florida father left his 18-month-old son in the backseat of a car and later found the boy dead during daycare pickup in Plantation. Plantation officers were called to A World of Discovery Academy shortly after 5:30 p.m. after a report of a deceased child in a vehicle.
The child was dead when officers arrived. Leslie Novoa identified him as an 18-month-old student, and the academy owner said she opened the car door, found the boy dead in the back seat and called 911. The moment turned an ordinary pickup into a fatal scene that unfolded in front of the daycare and drew a police response to the site.
The boy’s father had meant to drop him off that morning, but he allegedly forgot the child was in the car and went to work. That afternoon, he returned to pick up his son and found the child was not there. By then, the car had already become the last place anyone expected to look for a missing child.
That gap between intent and outcome is what makes the case so hard to read and so hard to explain. A parent believed he had taken the child to daycare, then came back hours later to an empty pickup line and a death investigation instead. The timing matters because the call came shortly after 5:30 p.m., when the day should have been ending normally for a family at the academy.
What remains unanswered is whether charges have been filed. For now, the facts leave the case at its sharpest edge: a child was found dead after being left in a car, the father’s mistake is central to what happened, and investigators have not made clear what comes next.
