More ‘Red Flags' Against Mesquite Daycare Owner Accused of Child Endangerment

The family of a child who attended a Mesquite daycare run by a woman accused of endangering children says they suspected something was wrong.

Rebecca Anderson, 60, is accused of tying kids to car seats and medicating them to keep quiet. She operated “Becky’s Home Child Care” until late last week when Mesquite police executed a search warrant at the daycare.

Police were tipped off by a parent who secretly recorded Anderson. Police say the video shows a boy being yanked out of his car seat, fed an unknown substance using a syringe, then picked up off the ground by a bib around his neck.

Anderson is charged with nine counts of child endangerment and one count of injury to a child.

“I was suspicious but we didn't have proof,” said Keonna Oliver, a grandmother who picked up her 2-year-old grandson every day from the daycare. 

Oliver says she did her due diligence last year when researching daycares for 2-year-old Triston. It was the five-star reviews of Becky’s Home Child Care that won her over.

“She won awards so all that was convincing,” Oliver explained.

Triston, she says, went to Becky's Home Child Care for 14 months.

He was taken out last month because of scheduling, not safety, issues.

Still, she says during that time Triston came home with bruises, scrapes and rashes.

“Anything we asked her about she would smooth it over. ‘He played really hard today, I didn't notice it’,” she recalled.

Police raided the daycare on Friday allegedly finding children in dark rooms, tied to car seats with “shoe-like ligatures” that police said appeared to be used to limit movement.

Police say Anderson admitted she’d "likely given Tylenol to all of the children… to make them stop crying and to make her job easier."

Oliver says she's found another daycare but is leery about leaving him with anyone after learning of the unthinkable accusations involving the most innocent of victims.

“You think ‘home day care’, you think safe, like home and it turned out to be something totally different and we're so disappointed,” she said.

Anderson is licensed through the state.

Records show her daycare had been inspected twice in the past three years.

The only deficiency reported was in 2016 for not completing an emergency preparedness plan.

As of Tuesday night, Anderson remained in the Dallas County jail.

The Department of Family and Protective Services is investigating.