Day Center Where Girl Drowned Is Closed : Tragedy: State inspector finds defective latch on pool gate. Operator who says she loved child is accused of ‘willful neglect.’

State officials Thursday shut down the day-care center where a toddler drowned earlier this week after inspectors found faulty latches on gates to the pool.

“We felt that they failed to guarantee a safe facility, a safe environment for the children,” said Diane Hawthorne, a licensing supervisor with the department.

On Wednesday, an inspector found that latches on gates leading from the patio to the back-yard pool, which were supposed to be self-latching, were defective.

Daniel A. Garcia, an attorney for the Department of Social Services, said day-care operator Jane Ann Siemer knew the latches were defective, which “constitutes willful neglect.” Garcia said that he hopes to make the closure permanent.

On Tuesday morning, Siemer found 18-month-old Ariel Nicole Moon floating unconscious in her pool. The toddler, one of three children Siemer cared for that day, remained in a coma until Wednesday afternoon, when she died at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. She was the third Orange County youngster to drown in a back-yard pool or spa this year.

In a sometimes-emotional interview, Siemer, 46, a day-care home operator for 2 1/2 years, acknowledged Thursday that she left a gate to the pool unlatched Tuesday. She also confirmed that the latches were not working properly because “due to the weather, the gate has warped.” But, she said, “my husband has fixed it. He fixed it last night.”

Siemer added that she was deeply concerned for Ariel’s parents and “emotionally distraught” over the girl’s death.

“My day care’s not wicked. And I’m not a wicked lady,” Siemer insisted. “I feel like she (Ariel) was my own child. And I loved her like my own. . . . I had that baby since she was 3 months old. I watched her teeth come in. . . . And to be the one to find her--I don’t know what to say to the parents but I do love her.”

Ariel’s father, Tony Moon, who awakened Thursday morning and forgot it was his 33rd birthday, said he was in Illinois on a business trip when he received the news of his daughter’s accident. The hasty plane ride home, a four-hour trip, was excruciating, he said.

“It seemed to last about 32 hours,” he said. “At a time like that, everything runs through your mind. I was thinking of my little girl, of dates with my wife. Your mind’s going a thousand miles an hour.”

Moon and his wife, Andrea, 30, who live a little more than a mile from the day-care center, showed photographs taken just last month of Ariel in her favorite outfit: overalls.

“She was an outdoorsy little tomboy,” Andrea Moon said. “She loved to run around.”

“Even at that age she felt out of place in a dress,” her husband added. “We’d put her in a dress to take her to synagogue, and she didn’t like it.”

The pictures show Ariel mugging for the camera or sitting next to her 3-year-old brother, Zachery, to whom she was devoted, her parents said.

“She loved him,” her mother said. “He’s the only one she gave a kiss to voluntarily. She’d give him everything that she had.”

“I’m glad I do have him,” Andrea Moon said, tears welling. “There is something to live for. You have to go on. You force yourself to.”

Siemer on Thursday offered her first public account of the chain of events that led to Ariel’s death.

Early Tuesday morning, Siemer said, she walked to the pool area to water her flowers. That day, Ariel’s mother arrived about 10 minutes early with the little girl and Zachary, Siemer said. And when she went to meet them, she forgot to latch the gate.

“I forgot about this gate, the gate from the patio,” Siemer said. “It would have been locked but that morning I decided I would just water before my children came. It was not open,” she added; it was just not latched.

Hawthorne said one of her inspectors found that the gate could be opened with very little pressure, “probably with a finger.”

Siemer said the two Moon children and another toddler played in the living room as usual Tuesday morning and then took a nap. “While they were napping, I opened (the living room door to the patio) and closed the screen door so they could get some air,” she said. Then, “I had some clothes in the dryer. The buzzer went off. I got the clothes and put them away and then went to the bathroom.”

Siemer said that when she left the room, “Ariel was sleeping on the couch.” But when she returned, “I noticed she was up from her nap. I went over to change her diaper and she wasn’t in the living room. And the screen door was open.”

Siemer said she went out to the pool and “I caught the red shorts out of the corner of my eye, in the pool. And I screamed and pulled her out. She was in the deep end. She had a tennis ball she plays with, and evidently the toy must have fell in,” because later “I noticed a tennis ball in the pool.”

“Ariel was close to the surface of the water, floating,” Siemer recounted. “She had her face upward toward the sky and she was very limp. And I grabbed her leg and pulled her towards me and put my mouth over her.”

Siemer said she tried to use artificial respiration as she carried Ariel to the house and called 911.

While she was on the line with a 911 dispatcher, she also was “trying to put my mouth over her and blowing,” Siemer said. Then “I noticed that her lips were blue. They weren’t when I pulled her out.”

Under terms of the state order, issued by the Department of Social Services, Siemer may not care for children--other than her own--until her case is heard before an administrative law judge. If she does not contest the accusation, she will lose her license, state officials said.

Siemer said she hopes to keep her license, because “I dedicated my life to this profession. And I always wanted to care for other children. I used to work in a hospital as a nurse’s aide and it was depressing. I wanted to work with babies. And teach 2-year-olds.”

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this report.