A New Jersey toddler went to day care earlier this month with a full set of cornrows and came home with one missing. Now, her mother is pursuing legal action against the day care center, whose directors and workers say they don’t know what happened.

“It was a cornrow so it was braided down to her scalp,” Tamara Hemingway told WABC. “There’s no way that, I don’t know who could have done it, but I know for a fact she or a kid would not have done that.”

Tamara Hemingway said her 2-year-old daughter Myla came home from daycare one day missing a cornrow from her scalp. Daycare staffers said they don’t know what happened. Now, Hemingway is pursuing legal action. (Photos: Screenshots/WABC)

Hemingway says she sent her 2-year-old daughter, Myla, to the Growing Kids Academy in Ocean Township with four braids on the right side of her head. When she called to check in on Myla, a day care worker told her that her child appeared to be missing a cornrow and sent her a picture to confirm.

“Then that’s when she sent me the picture, and that’s when I saw the big bald spot in my child’s head with the braid missing,” Hemingway said.

Citing surveillance video from inside the daycare, a police report noted that Myla’s hair looked normal around 11 a.m. Footage showed her playing with the now-missing braid several times. At 11:45 a.m., an employee is seen taking a smock off of Myla and then placing her hand on the right side of the toddler’s head.

The report states the braid wasn’t seen again after that point. Neither the hair nor the barrettes were ever found after a search.

The day care director said there’s no evidence that the toddler’s hair was pulled out.

However, Hemingway’s lawyer said the facility “deflected” and told Hemingway “various things” about what happened.

“They didn’t know if her child pulled it out,” attorney Marc Caswell said. “They didn’t know what happened at first, they said that they had no idea that it even happened.”

Hemingway was similarly troubled by the academy’s response to the situation.

“They’re supposed to notify me. Just to even like give whatever little information you do have about the incident until you look into it further and confirm. But no one even called me to just let me know that little bit of information. I’m very upset and I’m very frustrated because this is my child. Like she’s not able to let me know what happened. And that’s the concerning part, the fact that they’re just so insensitive. Like, no one even called me to check on her, see how she was doing,” she said.

A day care worker who spoke briefly to Law&Crime about the incident said, “All I know is it’s unsubstantiated. That nothing’s been found.”

Hemingway said Myla is now sensitive to people touching her hair. The toddler has been removed from the day care, and Hemingway said she and her lawyer plan to file a lawsuit