An Austin, Texas daycare center has landed in hot water after two toddlers walked out unnoticed.
A driver spotted the two two-year-olds walking down the street and called police. Other drivers slammed on their brakes, and one man took them to the sidewalk. The boys were holding hands and walking down the middle of the street.
“I just feel really distraught about the whole situation,” Leticia Lopez, the mother of one of the boys, told KHOU. “He’s our baby boy. You know, it could be a different situation right now.”
Elizabeth Kempf, the daycare’s owner, says that all the doors have child locks and that the gates self-lock automatically, so the children should not have been able to leave. “We’re, of course, extremely upset. We realize this incident could have ended in a tragedy, and I don’t know how I could have lived through that if it had,” Kempf said.
However, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has found 33 deficiencies at the day care, five of which are considered “high risk,” including an incident in which children were found to be playing with insect repellent.