While a criminal case continues, the civil filing arrives after regulators closed Creative Beginnings and months after a worker was charged in the child’s death.
LENOIR, N.C. — In North Carolina, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed over the death of 16-month-old Maddy Mitchell and is renewing attention on the Lenoir daycare where she died, a center that state officials suspended just days after the child was found unresponsive during nap time.
The lawsuit matters not only because it accuses former employee Alexandra Coffey of gross negligence, but because it ties one child’s death to the collapse of a licensed childcare operation. Creative Beginnings was ordered closed on May 21, 2025, after state officials said emergency action was needed. Nearly a year later, the parents’ lawsuit adds a more detailed account of what they say happened inside the room where Maddy was supposed to be supervised.
State action came fast after the child’s death. Maddy was found unresponsive at Creative Beginnings on May 19, 2025, according to police and local television reports. Two days later, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services suspended the license of the center’s operator, Kids Time of Lenoir LLC, and ordered the facility to close at the end of the business day. The department’s notice said the public health, safety or welfare required emergency action. Months later, local reporting said there was no longer a pending appeal, meaning the shutdown stood. In a small community, that turned a criminal investigation into a wider question about who was watching the center and what standards were being enforced before Maddy died.
The criminal case followed on a parallel track. Alexandra Lee Coffey, who was 29 at the time of her arrest, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and held on a $500,000 secured bond, according to local reports from May 2025. Police did not immediately explain in public filings why they believed the charge fit. Search warrant details later cited by WSOC said Maddy had been put down for a nap at 11:45 a.m. and was found unresponsive at 2:30 p.m. Officers seized a video recorder, a blanket and a mattress cover. Those pieces of evidence suggested investigators were building a room-by-room account long before the parents filed their civil complaint in March 2026.
The new lawsuit fills in that gap with severe allegations. Angel Dawn Blankenship and Jovon Jerell Mitchell say Coffey forced Maddy face down onto a sleeping mat after the toddler got up, covered her head with a blanket, trapped her legs and lay her upper body across the child’s upper torso and neck. The complaint alleges Coffey stayed on top of Maddy while using her phone and did not check on the child for about three hours after she stopped moving. When Coffey did look again, the lawsuit says, Maddy was already dead and showing early rigor mortis. That account is a claim by the family, not a courtroom finding, but it is the most detailed narrative yet made public.
The records around the center add another layer of context. WRAL reported that state inspection documents from August 2024 showed not all staff members were properly certified in first aid and CPR. Officials have not publicly linked that finding to Maddy’s death, and the inspection issue predates the fatal incident by months. Still, once the center was closed, every prior record carried new weight. The released 911 call added to that picture. The caller told dispatchers a child was not breathing and was “turning blue,” then said she had believed the child was asleep. That call captured confusion at the very moment when a licensed center was expected to respond quickly and competently to an emergency involving a toddler.
The medical conclusion described in the lawsuit also changed the public understanding of the case. The complaint says the child’s death was ruled a homicide caused by smothering from compression asphyxia. Spectrum News reported it could not independently obtain the autopsy report because North Carolina law restricts public release of some medical examiner documents while a case remains incomplete. That leaves prosecutors, the civil lawyers and any future court proceedings as the most likely paths for the public to learn more. For now, the homicide finding appears in news coverage through the family’s complaint, not through a released autopsy.
There is also the question of institutional responsibility beyond one worker. The wrongful death suit names Coffey, not the daycare operator, in the reporting now available. But the closure of the center ensures that the case will continue to be read as more than a single allegation against one employee. It became a story about state oversight, daycare safety and whether warning signs were missed before a child died on her first day in care. Coffey had not yet answered the civil complaint in court as of mid-March 2026, and Law and Crime reported that no next criminal trial date had been publicly scheduled.
The center is closed, the criminal case is still pending and the family is now asking a jury to weigh damages and responsibility. The next step most likely to move the public record is a court filing from Coffey or a new hearing date in the manslaughter prosecution.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.