Kindergartner Escapes School, And Nobody Noticed

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – A 6-year-old left school in the middle of the day and no one noticed.

It happened on Monday and the child's mother said he was outside in the playground for 45 minutes alone before he wandered off.

"The scariest thing for me is if he had not made it home," said Tanderine Clark, whose 6-year-old son James McCray Jr, is a kindergartner at Earl Warren Elementary School. "No one was with him, he was unaccounted for, I didn't know how long!"

A neighbor's security camera captured the child wandering through his neighborhood on Monday afternoon. Somehow he made it home where his grandmother happened to be home to let him in. Clark left work and rushed home.

"I called the school, and they didn't even know my son was gone," she told CBS13.

Clark explained that the school's principal told her James was left on the playground during recess around 11:45 a.m. About 45 minutes later, the student slipped underneath the gate and headed towards home.

"I had to go to the bathroom," James told CBS13. "I was really very cold."

Clark told CBS13 that the teacher told the principal she thought James had left on early dismissal.

"His backpack is still in your classroom," Clark said. "If he got an early dismissal, wouldn't he at least have gone to get his backpack?"

In a statement, a spokesperson with Sacramento City Unified School District said "a student at Earl Warren hid on the playground ... a teacher mistakenly believed he was on early release. The gap in the gate has been fixed. We regret that this incident occurred."

But hearing the school district's explanation made Clark even angrier.

"I feel like the school is kind of blaming my child," she said.

Now Clark said she wants the school to be held accountable and the teacher to be fired.

"In the same sense, I feel wrong because I know she's a very good teacher," Clark said. "I want this to never happen again."

Clark asked the school to show her the video from the security camera facing the playground but she told CBS 13 the principal told her it was broken. Her son has not returned to school since Monday and she doesn't know if she wants him to go back there again.