A five-year-old kindergarten student in Texas left the school in the middle of the day without anyone noticing, before being found by a good Samaritan who safely returned the child to campus, WFAA reported.
The student, Elijah, left Rufino Mendoza Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, during school hours on Monday, August 31, NBC 5 reported.
The child was later discovered by Isabel Barrera several blocks away, crying in the street. She was in the neighbourhood visiting her parents when she found him. She noticed the school name on the boy’s shirt and drove him back to campus, where staff told her they had no idea he was gone.
“I see a little boy in the street; he’s running, crying, and I think my mom instincts just kicked in. He hugged me, and I hugged him back, and I was like, ‘Are you OK?’ And at that point, all I could think about was, he’s someone’s baby,” Barrera told the outlet.
According to her, the school didn’t even know that the student had gone missing. “They’re like, OK, and everybody starts freaking out; they’re like, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t even know he got out,’” she added.
Fort Worth ISD didn’t clarify how a student could leave the campus or how long the kindergartener was away from the school.
“Fort Worth ISD is aware of an incident involving a kindergarten student who left campus during lunch on Monday. The student was safely located by a community member and promptly returned to school,” they said in a statement to WFAA.
“The safety and well-being of our students remain our highest priority.”
The district and campus administration are currently looking into the circumstances that led to the incident. Necessary steps to strengthen the existing safety protocols and procedures will be taken, according to the district.
The child’s mother, Rebekah Alcaraz, said school officials gave her a completely different account when she arrived at pickup.
“They said that he had walked out of the building but that two employees and the security guard had got to him before he was able to leave, and they brought him back inside,” she told NBC5.
The mother later saw a post by Barrera’s husband in a neighbourhood Facebook group and realised that a stranger had found her son on the streets.
Alcaraz and Elijah’s grandmother met with school and district staff on Tuesday, but they felt their concerns were not being taken seriously.
“I feel like we’re being dismissed,” Alcaraz said.
The mother added that the incident has left her worried about the safety of her son at the school.
“They traumatized my little boy. They traumatized me as a parent, and I fear for his safety now at that school.”
Though the school assured Barrera that the child’s family would be notified of the incident, the mother claims they didn’t tell her the whole story.
“What they failed to tell me was that my son left the school campus. He was three to four blocks away from the school; he was crying and lost out there. And a parent that just so happened to have seen him was the one who brought him back. They didn’t notify me of any of this,” Alcaraz told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
In the Facebook post, Barrera’s husband asked the school to do better on student safety protocols.
“FWISD and Rufino Mendoza Elementary need to do better.”
According to the outlet, the child’s mother has filed a police report and is also planning to seek legal action against the district.
“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, and it’s something you don’t think could ever happen to you until that happens to you. The fact that they’re not taking accountability still — that’s what’s really getting to me,” Alcaraz said.
The incident has put a spotlight on whether the district’s heavily funded turnaround effort is reaching campus operations. For parents like Alcaraz, the money spent on teacher salaries and instructional overhauls means little if their child can walk out unnoticed.
