A childcare centre and an employee are set to be sentenced after an unsupervised toddler became trapped on a fence and fatally choked.
Ebony Thompson, aged 22 months, died after her neck became stuck on the loop-top fence at a daycare southeast of Darwin in 2023.
Her parents Floyd and Jade Thompson attended Darwin Local Court on Thursday for sentencing submissions after Humpty Doo Community and Child Care Centre and childcare worker Casandra Lee Harris entered guilty pleas.
Both were charged with failing to protect children from harm and hazards.
The centre was further charged with inadequately supervising children.
Ebony's parents arrived on Thursday with about 20 supporters wearing purple, the toddler's favourite colour.
Judge Stephen Geary told them it was a difficult case involving the death of a "beautiful, intelligent young girl".
"The heart of this tragedy is the lack of supervision," he said.
The court heard that Ebony was separated from her "Green Ants" toddler group as they washed their hands before lunch.
She visited a chicken coop and was unsupervised for up to 10 minutes.
A coronial inquest found the toddler's death was preventable.
The loop-top fence on which she became trapped on August 31, 2023, was in a "blind spot" behind a shed at the centre where children went to view the chickens.
The lack of a yard check as part of the centre's supervision strategy was a "systemic failure" by the centre and childcare regulator Quality Education and Care Northern Territory, the coroner found in October 2025.
The regulator had also failed to adequately manage the risk posed by the chicken enclosure fence, Coroner Elisabeth Armitage found.
On Thursday, prosecutor Nick Goodfellow told the court a childcare worker found Ebony trapped on the fence, upright and blue in the face.
She was rushed to hospital where she died two days later.
The hazard to which Ebony was exposed was of the childcare centre's own making - the creation of the blindspot by the chicken coop, Mr Goodfellow said.
Defence lawyer Adam Mason said the childcare centre had since been renovated to be safer for kids, installed 24 CCTV cameras and adopted more regular headcounts.
Since the death, some families had withdrawn their children from the centre, a registered charity run by a parents' committee.
The centre's reputation had been adversely affected and might never recover, Mr Mason said, as he argued for no convictions to be entered.
Harris, a 31-year-old mother of two, had worked in childcare since she was 18 and a conviction would impact her ability to be employed, he said.
Ebony's family has called for a ban on loop-top fencing under a proposed "Ebony's Law" and want a three-strikes rule for supervision breaches that would temporarily close childcare centres pending safety rectifications.
Judge Geary adjourned the case for sentencing on November 3.
Two charges against another childcare worker, Gurmeet Kaur Rimpy, were dropped on Thursday and the judge told her she was free to go.
The centre's director, Rachel Lee Marsh, is understood to be contesting charges laid against her, to be heard at a later date.
