A Florida woman is demanding prison time for her mother after her two young children died less than a year apart while her grandmother is allegedly in their grandmother's care, one in a hot car death and the other in an accidental drowning.
The grandmother, 65-year-old Tracey Nix, was arrested in November 2022 of being charged with aggravated manslaughter and leaving a child unsupervised in a motor vehicle, court records show. The charges are related to the Nov. 1, 2022 death of 7 month-old Uriel Schock.
Authorities said Nix left Uriel in her vehicle outside her Wauchula home for several hours after returning from lunch. According to the court documents, Nix said she forgot the child was in the car.
How do you forget a little girl, Drew Schock, Drew Schock's father, said in a tearful interview this week with local station WFTS.
Nix told authorities that her daughter, Kaila Schock, asked her to watch Uriel while she was at a hair appointment. Nix said she went to a friend's house that morning and then left to pick up Uriel.
She then drove to a restaurant for lunch with her friends, according to the documents. Security footage showed Nix putting her granddaughter in a rear car seat and driving away, authorities said in the documents. Nix said she drove about 10 minutes to her home, parked the car and went inside to talk to her dog and practice the piano.
She told the Hardee County Sheriff's Office that it was not like I was rushing in the house to do anything I forgot, according to the documents.
The court filing states that Nix was waiting for her older grandson to arrive so they could go out to dinner. She took two cups of tea out of her vehicle for her and her grandson and drove the vehicle to her backyard after 4: 30 p.m. The documents state that Nix's husband was in the backyard and the two talked for about 10 minutes.
The documents state that when the grandson arrived, Nix said all of a sudden it came across her head that Uriel was still in the car. Nix's husband immediately pulled the baby out and began CPR while someone called 911.
Uriel was pronounced dead at the scene. The temperatures in Wauchula reached 90 degrees that day, according to the sheriff's office.
An autopsy showed no signs of injuries. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Drew Schock told WFTS he remembers being in the parking lot outside the hospital trying to grasp what just happened. It happened twice in our lifetime. In December 2021, the 16 month-old son Ezra died, also while in Nix's care. The court records state that Nix was babysitting the little boy when she fell asleep. The child went outside and drowned in a pond near her home. She was not charged in the incident.
Kaila told the news station she was six months pregnant with Uriel at the time her son died. The couple has an older child. She initially did not trust her mother to watch her children after Ezra died, but believed in second chances.
We were anxious, but I loved my mother. She said that she was a daughter that wanted her mom. When I heard that Ezra's death was an accident, a sliver child part of me thought: 'OK. I get to keep this mom, this grandmother. Kaila said her mother was taking Uriel to lunch with her friends. A sheriff's deputy came to Kaila's house and delivered the heartbreaking news.
Drew said two children are no longer here. Kaila told the news station she needs to go to prison. It kills me to say it. As their mother, I demand it. Nix's negligence resulted in the deaths of both children, according to authorities. Her attorney did not respond immediately to a request for comment. A pretrial hearing is set for May 2, according to court records.