San Antonio 3rd Grader Leaves School Campus, Hitches Ride Home With Stranger

When a 3rd grader can leave school with a stranger, investigations are bound to come around. The student in question decided to leave the school campus after being disciplined, and while he was found after an hour, such a situation could have gone horribly wrong in nine out of ten situations. The event has since then sparked an investigation at the school district of Northside Independent in San Antonio, Texas. One can only assume what must have been going through Corey Heemer’s mind- the mother of the student who left school. Heemer later stated, “What did she mean gone? Did she really just lose my kid? Did he go to the counselor[…], go somewhere else on campus? What do you mean he’s just gone?” 

3rd Grader Left School Without Informing Anyone- and Hitched A Ride With A Trucker

According to the 3rd grader’s teacher, Colten had been punished at 9 am when the teacher made him stand outside the portable classroom. But the special needs child didn’t stick around and simply went under a fence to leave the campus. Heemer mentioned, “He was able to crawl under, and he had his backpack on. So he crawled under and was able to walk back up that side street.” After Colten had eluded the eyes of the school security, he walked up to the corner on Tillman Ranch and Pritcher Road- where his mother stated he had crossed the street, flagged a trucker, and asked him to take him home. 

Later, the video from the house showed the driver dropping this 3rd grader safely in front of his house. While it was Colten’s good fortune that the truck driver was a good man, things could have gone haywire in the flash of a second. The ISD officials at Northside mentioned that there was already a break in protocol, and other mechanisms that would help teachers if they needed assistance. Barry Perez, the Communications Director for Northside Independent School District, stated, “The teacher should have called the front office for an administrator, or a counselor or another campus staff to assist in the matter.”

The School District has decided to go through with the investigation, and Perez has mentioned that this incident would be analyzed throughout to reinforce the instruction to teachers on how one should be handling such a situation in the future. 

Kids Going AWOL Are Unfortunately Not Rare

This isn’t the only incident regarding a school student going AWOL this year. Before this 3rd grader decided to flag a trucker, there was a 6th grader who was declared missing- but fortunately found later. Witnesses close to the situation stated that the child, a student at Creekbend Elementary Middle School, got really upset and ran into the woods surrounding the school. This led to the deputies of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department springing into action to locate the kid. The kid was found two hours after he had run away. 

Pat Sullivan, the Fire Chief at Harrison County, responded, “In this kind of situation, we knew that getting here quickly, we knew that putting a lot of people and resources to it, the outcome was probably going to be a good outcome, and it certainly was. So we celebrate that and are very happy that the child is safe and taken care of.” Mitchel King, the Harrison County School District Superintendent also mentioned, “We’ve talked to the school principal. They didn’t know of anything that’s happened today out of the ordinary that would cause [the student] to feel this way. They have talked to the students that were involved, trying to get to the bottom of it, and we will get to the bottom of it. If there was something that caused this to happen, we’ll find out what it is and deal with it.”

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