3-year-old Girl Found Alive in Apartment, Days after Her Mother Died in It

A social worker was early last week notified that a three-year-old girl had not shown up at her daycare for a couple of days. The social worker responded to the call and when she arrived at the home the toddler shared with her single mother, Deja Lynn Toler, she was able to persuade the girl to open the front door. Once inside the apartment, she found the mom dead in her bed.

NBC Connecticut reports that she had likely died several days earlier.The young girl had survived by eating cereal that had fallen onto the floor. She was promptly taken to the hospital for dehydration but is expected to improve.

Neighbour, Susan Tash said she had heard strange noises coming from her neighbor’s apartment upstairs, she said, there were louder than normal toddler outbursts and the television was on high volume but she decided not to disturb single mother and her daughter. But now she wishes that she had knocked on the door.
She said Toler had moved to the East Hartford, Connecticut, apartment building last summer. Tash told WFSB that she offered to lend a hand if the single mom ever needed help:

“I told her if anything is ever wrong bang on the ceiling three times.”

The neighbor spoke positively about Toler, she said she was a good mother and was surprised when she heard the daughter was in the hospital.

Friends and neighbors wish they had checked in sooner. Tash said: “Boy, do I regret not going up there.”

Police are performing an autopsy to determine the cause of death but, as WFSB reports, they don’t see anything suspicious.