7-year-old with autism goes missing from Ontario school wearing just a t-shirt in January
CTV
The Ontario Autism Coalition is urging the government to investigate after a seven-year-old boy with limited verbal ability wandered off from school in early January wearing nothing but a t-shirt.
The Ontario Autism Coalition is urging the government to investigate after a seven-year-old boy with limited verbal ability wandered off from school in early January wearing nothing but a t-shirt.
Neelam Rasheid said she was notified of her son’s absence from the Ajax, Ont. school via an email on Jan. 9. The school said the child was found within a couple minutes by a neighbour.
“A million questions started to rest in my head,” Rasheid told reporters on Thursday.
She looked up who the neighbour was and discovered it was a 10 minute walk away from the school, through a wooded area.
“That neighbour, who I now refer to as my son's guardian angel … advised me that she had seen my son from her kitchen window, walking through the woods in the winter storm in only a t-shirt. He had on no jacket, no hat, no boots,” she said through tears.
“They eventually caught up to him at the end of the woods, to a busy four-lane road. My son was found running back and forth on the road with vehicles having to slow down to avoid hitting him.”
Speaking with the neighbour, who also provided video evidence with a timestamp, Rasheid learned that her son, Zak, had actually been missing from school for about 35 minutes—not the three to four minutes as she was originally told.
