Childcare workers jailed after allegedly severing toe of two-year-old at Makhachkala kindergarten

A court in the Daghestani capital of Makhachkala has ordered two childcare workers and a nanny from a local kindergarten into custody after an incident in which the little toe of a two-year-old girl was severed while she was at the school. A criminal case has been opened under charges of providing services that failed to meet safety requirements, law enforcement agencies reported on 14 May.

The incident took place on 8 May at Kindergarten No. 22 in Makhachkala’s Sovetsky district. According to investigators, the girl, born in 2023, suffered an injury to her right foot while at the kindergarten. Doctors at the Kuraev Children’s Republican Clinical Hospital later said she had suffered a ‘traumatic amputation of the little toe on the right foot’.

According to preliminary reports cited by a law enforcement source speaking to the state-run news agency RIA Novosti, the child had gotten her little toe stuck in a door, after which the toe was partially ripped off. The source claimed that the staff members ‘finished cutting off’ the injured toe instead of immediately calling an ambulance.

At the same time, the Kuraev Children’s Republican Clinical Hospital told the state-run agency TASS that doctors had found no signs that the toe had been severed with a sharp object. According to medical staff, the child had suffered a lacerated and bruised wound and detachment of the nail phalanx, more characteristic of a crushing injury than of a cut.

The kindergarten staff reportedly did not inform the parents about the injury. The parents discovered what had happened only after returning home and changing the child’s clothes, at which point a fragment of the toe fell out of the girl’s tights. The girl’s parents then took her to hospital themselves. Doctors told the family that the time window for possible tissue restoration had already been lost.

‘When the girl was brought to hospital, she had an open wound, and after the dressing procedure everything around was covered in blood. The child herself was in a state of shock, crying and screaming’, Gusein Rustamov, head of the hospital’s trauma department, told the state-run Channel Five.

The girl’s father said that the child had suffered psychological trauma and ‘cries a lot’. According to him, because of her age, his daughter is not yet able to explain in detail what happened at the kindergarten.

‘We are trying to speak gently with her. Our daughter is at home now, she has already been discharged from hospital’, he said.

The child’s grandfather, meanwhile, told journalists that there had been a ‘clean cut’ at the site of the injury. The parents also noted that the girl had been sent home wearing someone else’s shoes and carrying a different bag.

The criminal investigation is continuing and two childcare workers and a nanny have been remanded in custody. They are suspected of providing services that failed to meet safety requirements for children’s life and health, as well as negligence. The first charge carries a sentence of up to six years’ imprisonment, while the second provides a fine or arrest for up to three months. Investigators are also examining how assistance was provided to the child and the actions of staff following the injury.

Following the incident, the head of the kindergarten, two childcare workers, and a nanny were dismissed, the Makhachkala education department reported. City authorities also announced unscheduled inspections of all preschool institutions. Deputy Mayor Shagane Baimurzaeva said specialists would examine not only staff professionalism, but also their psychological condition, their approach to working with children, and their ability to act under stress.

Baimurzaeva said the incident at Kindergarten No. 22 had dealt a blow ‘to parents’ trust, to the reputation of the entire education system, and to the very essence of the teaching profession’.

Elena Pavlyuchenko, head of the education and science committee in the Daghestani Parliament, described the case involving the child’s toe amputation as a ‘shocking story’. She added that it was ‘not the first case of children being injured in kindergartens’.

‘The [childcare workers] did not call an ambulance and did not immediately inform the parents about what had happened, trying to conceal the situation. This suggests that they were thinking not about the child, but about how to avoid responsibility’, Pavlyuchenko wrote.

She called for unscheduled inspections ‘not only in Makhachkala institutions, but throughout the republic’.