Easton Area Middle School 7 8
An Easton Area Middle School 7-8 student with Asperger Syndrome says he fell asleep in a time-out classroom and when he awoke the school was dark and mostly empty. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)
The mother of an Easton Area Middle School 7-8 student wants answers to her claim that her son was left unattended when school ended, fell asleep in a classroom and woke up four hours later with few people left in the building.
Laura Reed, of Easton, said she panicked Tuesday afternoon when she left her city home to deal with a broken furnace. All three of her children -- attending schools in the Easton Area School District -- are brought home by buses by late afternoon.
But when Reed returned home at 3 p.m., the oldest of her three children -- her 12-year-old son diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome -- never got off the bus from the Forks Township school.
"I was thinking, 'I don't know where he is,'" she recalled. "I looked everywhere he would have walked to and he was nowhere. I can't explain it. I was just trying to figure out where he was and why the police didn't find him yet."
The scare hit home even more so just five days after 5-year-old Jayliel Vega Batista, an Allentown boy diagnosed with autism, went missing during a New Year's Eve party. Jayliel's body was found by divers about a quarter-mile from the house where he wandered away, eight feet from a canal bank in about six feet of 39-degree water, authorities said.
Reed began searching the streets for her child in the vicinity of her home near 12th and Washington streets. She said her son ran away in September following an argument with his grandfather. But in that incident, nearby Palmer Township police found him in a housing development in a little more than an hour.
By 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, a worried Reed went to the Easton Police Department and reported her son missing. Police Lt. Scott Casterline said officers helped search for the boy and notified surrounding police departments until he returned home by about 6:30 p.m.
District officials also were notified by police, Casterline said.
District Superintendent John Reinhart said in an email the district continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the student's absence from the bus after school.
"We will be discussing these circumstances with this student's mother as soon as we can determine the validity of the events that have been reported to us," Reinhart said. "We will not be discussing these circumstances with anyone but Mrs. Reed and those adults directly involved in the supervision of this student. The district will address the findings of our investigation quickly."
'Missing for hours'
Reed wants answers and claims district officials have provided few details in what led to her son being left unattended in a classroom for hours.
Reed's son, an Intermediate Unit pupil at the middle school, told his mother he was misbehaving during the second-to-last period of the school day. Sometime around 1:30 p.m., the boy told his mother a teacher placed him inside a "time-out" classroom alone.
Reed is aware of the classroom and said an instructor normally sits outside the room when a student is asked to stay in "time out." Her son's class is made up of an estimated 15 students with special needs taught by a teacher, a mental health worker and a classroom support instructor, according to Reed.
At some point, the child fell asleep. When he woke up around 5:30 p.m., an estimated four hours later, the classroom was dark and hardly anyone was left in the school building, Reed said.
Her son began crying and walked the hallways searching for an adult, Reed says.
A good Samaritan picking up her son from wrestling practice at the school spotted Reed's son crying in the hallway and the boy told her where he lived, Reed said. The woman then brought the boy home by 6:30 p.m. and Reed called off the police search, she said.
Reed said she remains haunted by what could occurred if the woman didn't find her child at the school, whose campus is partially surrounded by woods.
"She just happened to see him walking around," Reed said. "If she didn't find him and he walked off the mountain in the dark, he could have gotten very hurt."
Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.