NEWS

Yonkers mom charged in disabled girl's death removed from classroom

Lee Higgins
  • Nicole Diggs of Yonkers removed from Bronx classroom after being charged in disabled daughter's death.
  • Diggs pleaded not guilty to criminally negligent homicide Wednesday, being held on $25,000 bail.
  • Diggs' severely disabled 8-year-old daughter died after history of neglect complaints against mother.

A Bronx special education teacher charged in the 2012 death of her severely disabled 8-year-old daughter in Yonkers has been barred from having access to students.

Nicole Diggs, 31, of Yonkers, charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of Alayah-Rose Savarese, has been reassigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of her case, said New York City Department of Education spokeswoman Marge Feinberg.

Diggs, who had been awarded nearly $2.1 million to take care of Alayah, works at P.S. 152 Evergreen, an elementary school, and earns roughly $70,000 a year. She is accused of neglecting Alayah for a six-month period leading up to the girl's death at her apartment on Ashburton Avenue, by failing to feed her, bathe her and attend to her medical needs.

Nicole Diggs, 31, of Yonkers, left, walks into the Westchester County Courthouse, accompanied by her aunt and uncle and her lawyer, in front, in White Plains on Wednesday. Diggs was charged in the death of her daughter, 8-year-old Alayah-Rose Savarese.  The severely disabled Yonkers girl was found dead in her apartment two years ago.

Diggs pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Westchester County court and is being held on $25,000 bail at the county jail.

"When she gets out she won't be able to return to the school," said Feinberg, who declined to be more specific about where Diggs, a tenured teacher and Cornell University graduate, would be working. "We don't identify the location, but she is away from students and away from the classroom and away from the school."

Meanwhile, a man remains at large in the case.

Prosecutors would not say whether an arrest warrant issued Wednesday was for Diggs' husband, 27-year-old Oscar Thomas, who is on probation for misdemeanor DWI and has a misdemeanor attempted assault conviction. County probation officials declined comment.

Thomas left Alayah on June 25, 2012 with a friend who didn't know how to tube feed her and wouldn't recognize whether she was having medical issues as he and another friend went to a probation appointment that morning, a state child fatality report says. Alayah, who had cerebral palsy and couldn't walk, or talk and had to be fed through a tube, was found dead that afternoon with a ruptured stomach. She was dead roughly four to six hours before EMS officials arrived, despite the friend's claim he checked on her twice that morning. A blunt – a cigar rolled with marijuana – was found in the apartment; Thomas and two friends who were there tested positive for marijuana that day.

Six earlier neglect complaints had been made with the state regarding Alayah's care, including that she was filthy, underfed, frequently absent from school and missed physical therapy appointments.

Court papers filed in the case say Diggs told Child Protective Services two months before Alayah's death that she had to cancel an appointment with the agency because she and Thomas' young twin boys had "very bad coughs and she was taking them to a pediatrician." She also twice put off getting Alayah's wheelchair fitted in the spring of 2011, once telling CPS that a hospital "had lost her paperwork" and another time that "she has been busy with end of the school paperwork."

The $2.1 million trust was established after Diggs won a settlement in a 2006 medical malpractice suit against Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, N.Y., where Alayah was born.