PALATKA, Fla. – A Palatka day care is under fire after a 1½-year-old walked off the playground and onto a busy highway while under the facility's care.
The Les Papillions day care is just off U.S. 17 (Reid Street) in Palatka, and according to a police report, a little boy wandered from the facility onto the road and was seen by a passing driver, who stopped to help the toddler.
Recommended Videos
"I tooted the horn and it made him kind of scared to run back to the sidewalk and that's what he did, he ran from the horn to the sidewalk," said Angie Roberts, the good Samaritan driver who helped the boy. "That baby could have been dead this morning."
That same thought went through the mind of the boy's mother, Roxanne Akins.
"I could be burying him or never seen him again," Akins said of her son, Brantley (pictured). "I'm very angry. I'm very upset. Just every emotion that you could feel, I'm feeling it right now."
Akins said she received an urgent call from the day care Monday morning saying she needed to get there right away. When she arrived, she learned one of her two children who attend the day care had left he playground, crawled or walked through an unlocked gate, and made his way onto a busy four-lane highway.
Roberts told police she was driving by with her 3-year-old daughter when she saw Brantley standing in the right-hand lane. She said a semi-truck driver beside her and another driver behind her helped stop traffic so she could put the toddler in her backseat. She returned him to the day care.
According to the police report, Brantley, who was not injured in the incident, left the playground through a gate that had been left unlocked by a parent.
"For something like this to happen, I'm just glad that baby is safe," said Glenda Porter, owner of Les Papillions. "That's all that matters is that he's safe."
Porter fought back tears as she expressed her remorse. She said in her 30 years of education, this has never happened before. She said she takes full responsibility for the incident and precautions are now being taken to keep it from happening again.
"We're putting a new fence up, where parents don't have to worry about closing the gate. It will automatically shut by itself," Porter said.
But Akins said it's too late in her opinion and she'll be pulling her kids out of Les Papillions. She said she's lost faith in the day care -- but she discovered an angel in Roberts.
"Thank God she's an honest person and saved him and a good Samaritan," Akins said. "She could've been a child molester, could've been a kidnapper, it could have been anybody. Or I could be burying him tonight."
The Department of Children and Families is investigating the incident, trying to pinpoint which teacher was in charge of supervising Brantley when he got out.