http://www.khon2.com/news/local/5350351.html (There's a video!)
Quote:
An autistic boy who attends Washington Middle School in McCully wandered off campus Wednesday morning setting off a frantic search. It took more than two-and-a-half hours for police to finally locate the boy.
Washington Middle School Principal Michael Harano says the 12 year old boy recently moved to Oahu from Japan and went missing at 10:30 a.m. during recess. School officials quickly notified police.
A few minutes later he was spotted at the nearby Zippy’s restaurant on S. King Street by a worker getting ready for his shift.
"Before I started work around 10:30 I saw a boy run down the Zippy's parking lot,” said Brent Kamaya. “He didn't look unusual; he just looked like normal, just running. Jogging pace not sprinting, just regular.”
Kamaya says the boy ran towards the back of the restaurant where he probably squeezed through an opening in a fence that borders the school’s field and the restaurant.
As quickly as he was spotted, he was gone again.
“He came to us from Japan,” says Harano, “so he doesn't speak very much English, doesn't speak very much Japanese actually."
Harano says the boy usually has a skills trainer with him at school, but that wasn't the case on Wednesday.
“She was absent [and] the agency wasn't able to provide a substitute so it fell on other personnel to watch him.”
About two-and-a-half hours after the boy went missing he was spotted in a lobby of the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The boy’s mother told Harano that her son likes to visit the colorful Waikiki hotel.
Harano says hotel workers recognized the uniform the boy was wearing and called the school. The boy's mother was waiting for him when he arrived back on campus.
“She was calm,” the principal said. “He does have a history of doing this in Japan so it wasn't the first time that it happened.”
However having a student go missing was a first for Harano who's been the principal at Washington Middle School the past four years.
“We're going to have to go back and look at our procedures and try to make sure this doesn't happen again,” he said.
“It's really a principal's maybe worst nightmare to have a student go missing, so again we're very relieved, very happy it turned out the way it did.”
HPD spokesman Capt. Frank Fujii says police did not issue a Maile Amber Alert for the missing boy because the case did not meet the criteria. Maile Amber alerts are usually set aside for children who have been abducted or face immediate danger.
I thought this was interesting.. way to go, losing a kid!
Yeah, so I do live in Hawaii (for any of you that thought I was lying). Be sure to peep the exorbitant gas prices!
25 Jan 2007, 5:47 am
