Girl Goes AWOL

Jason Whitely reports

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DALLAS – At Oak Cliff's Lida Hooe Elementary School, classes get dismissed daily at 3 p.m. But on Tuesday, a kindergartner left by herself after lunch.

A woman spotted the five-year-old girl roaming around outside.

"She was looking like she didn't know where to go," said Ruth Duarte, an office worker at Sunset Chiropractic around the corner from campus. "I called out to her and I motioned her to come over here and she ran that way."

Duarte said she saw the girl alone near Twelfth and Hampton in Oak Cliff, which is a busy seven-lane intersection.

"That scared me because those cars were just coming and going and she could just dash out at anytime," she said.

The Dallas Independent School District said a teacher was supposed to escort the kindergartner to a music class in a portable building but didn't take the young student all the way.

Instead, the teacher stayed at the school's door and watched the child until she disappeared around the corner, DISD said. The girl, perhaps confused or scared, walked away.

"They said she tried to get back in but the doors were locked," Duarte said.

The little girl was gone more than an hour before the school discovered it. She eventually ended up at a relative’s home a few blocks away.

"The principal has already let the rest of her staff know that letting students go unescorted, particularly to classes outside the building, is unacceptable," said Jon Dahlander, a DISD spokesman.

Safety has suddenly become central, a lesson one kindergartner and her teacher taught the school.

The district said the teacher will likely face some kind of reprimand, though DISD would not say what it could be or when it might happen.

E-mail jwhitely@wfaa.com