Following school, a 6-year-old special needs girl was allegedly put in the wrong queue and was later discovered strolling on the I-45 feeder road in Houston, Texas.
According to FOX 26 Houston, a homeless man spotted Serenity Polk, a student at Lantrip Elementary School, wandering alone on the busy street on Thursday. After noticing that the girl’s school was listed on her clothing, the man apparently realised she was lost and called it.
Mercedes Polk, the girl’s mother, claimed that when she was informed of the girl’s whereabouts, her daughter, who is deaf in both ears, was crying and yelling.
“A homeless man that holds the sign right there on Cullen and I-45 found my daughter,” Polk told FOX 26. “He contacted the school. The school went to get her. She wouldn’t get in the car with them. So the school contacted the police. She wouldn’t get in the car with the police and that’s when they called me. All that time I thought my daughter was in the school building.”
When Polk heard her daughter was gone on Thursday, she went to the Houston Independent School District’s elementary school to pick her up.
“The teachers kept giving me excuses that they were looking for her within the school,” Polk said. “They were saying she might be at the playground. She might be in the bathroom, but it was over an hour. So I started freaking out even more.”
Serenity, a vehicle rider, was in the wrong queue and accidentally released from school as a walker.
“The walkers have a red badge. The car riders have white badges,” Polk said. “I was thinking, ‘I just lost my husband, now I’m about to lose my child.’ I didn’t know if she was raped, murdered, kidnapped, or hit by a car.”
According to Polk, her kid ended up a mile from the school on the congested I-45 feeder route.
Serenity was put in the incorrect line by a substitute instructor, according to the Houston Police Department’s information from school officials.
“My fears are this could happen to another child. My child could have died,” Polk said.
Child Protective Services reported that it is looking into the event.
