Former day care provider sentenced to 10 days on neglect charges

Update as of April 30, 2023: Connie Edwards pleaded out to misdimeanors of contributing to abuse, neglect or delinquency and a false report to authorities.Ealier story: A former Sioux Falls in-home day care provider will spend 10 days in jail for lying to police and having too many children in her house on the day an infant died in a crib.

Connie Edwards, 53, will never be allowed to work as a caregiver again as a result of her plea agreement with prosecutors, who had once charged her with felony abuse.

Supporters of Edwards, however, say the state has robbed her of the chance to do the work she described as her "ministry" and destroyed her reputation by unfairly implying that her failure to adhere to regulations caused a baby's death.

Her defense lawyer, Nicole Carper said the state "needed someone to blame" for the death of Meredith Ulmer, the four-month-old who died in a collapsible crib in an upstairs bathroom.

The death was ruled accidental.

"For three years, we've sat back and watched the prosecutors lie," said Dennis Edwards, Connie's husband, who accosted State's Attorney Aaron McGowan after the sentence hearing, following the prosecutor and calling him a narcissist.

"It's just a bad thing that happened to two families," Dennis Edwards told reporters.

There were 24 children cared for at the Edward's home on S. Remington Circle throughout the day on June 30, 2011. Connie Edwards left the home that afternoon after putting Ulmer to sleep, taking nine older children to Wild Water West for the afternoon.

Two teen girls, who weren't registered day care providers with the city, were caring for 15 children younger than five when one of them noticed that Meredith Ulmer had stopped breathing.

Edwards brought the older children to Kuehn Park and called their parents to pick them up before returning to her home. When she made it to the house, an hour after the 911 call, she told three officers that she hadn't cared for any other children that day.

She'd been cited twice before by the city for having too many children.

Sioux Falls Police Detective John Carda testified that he saw four cribs in the upstairs bedroom when he arrived at the house. One was in a closet. The other, where Ulmer had been sleeping, was in a bathroom.

When Edwards told officers she hadn't been caring for other children, Carda said, other parents told police that some kids were at Kuehn Park.

"I didn't see shock (in Connie Edwards)," Carda said. "I saw deception. There were clearly children at Kuehn Park."

McGowan said Edwards behavior after Ulmer's death and the citations before from the city beforehand, taken together, make her behavior on the day of the death disturbing.

"The defendant had kids stored in rooms, closets and storage spaces throughout the house… that Meredith's final hours spent in that bathroom is an outrage," McGowan said.

The child's mother, Megan Ulmer, told the judge that she was angry with Connie Edwards for not taking responsibility for her behavior. Meredith was a twin, and the Ulmers had asked if there was enough room for another child.

"I'm disappointed because she could have said no to us at any time," Megan Ulmer said.

Megan Ulmer was also upset that her daughter was upstairs, while the other children were scattered throughout the busy, loud house.

"How was anyone supposed to hear her?" she said.

Connie Edwards apologized during her emotional statement to the court. She said she treated the children in the day care as family and had for decades.

"I would never endanger any kid," Connie Edwards said. "With God as my witness ... this is what I was designed to do."

Edwards said she'd put her own children in cribs in the closet and that the caregivers were consistently checking on the children upstairs.

"They were my day care kids. They were my family," Edwards said.

She also said only brought the older children to the park to protect them.

"I didn't want all the kids going back to my day care and seeing all the cops," she said.

Carper told Judge Brad Zell that Meredith Ulmer's death could not be attributed to where she was sleeping or how many children were in the house.

The defense lawyer also presented documents showing that the 18-year-old caregiver in the home had passed the city's screening process to become a registered day care provider 10 days before the death.

That provider, had she been registered, would have been caring for only three more children than the city's registration rules allowed.

"The fact that she had two more children on the site at the time does not make the child's death any more likely," Carper said.

Judge Zell said it was clear to him that Connie Edwards' behavior did not rise to the level of criminal activity contributing to the child's death.

It was also clear, he said, that she was a good person with a long line of supporters who'd happily put children back in her day care if she had one. Aside from the day care citations, her criminal record consists of a handful of traffic citations.

Even so, Zell said, she had twice been cited for having too many kids in her care, and she'd clearly lied to police.

"Many, many people come before this court who are good people, but have committed a crime," Zell said. "It doesn't make them bad people."

Zell did not order a fine, but imposed a 10-day jail sentence.

Edwards will begin serving her sentence on June 1.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Woman who lied to police after child's death in day care to be sentenced