Autistic 8-year-old disappears from Jersey City school, is found asking for help at a bus stop

By Terrence T. McDonald | The Jersey Journal
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on September 24, 2014 at 2:52 PM, updated September 24, 2014 at 5:09 PM

An autistic Jersey City boy went missing from a school in the Heights yesterday, and was found later seeking help from strangers at a nearby bus stop, according to police

Cops arrived at School 27, on North Street, at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, and they found the boy's mother, who said school officials called her to say they couldn't find her 8-year-old son, according to a police report.

The boy went missing after a teacher's aide walked the boy from his classroom to the school's after-school program, known as Casper, the report says. Police officers searched inside the school but said the boy "was nowhere to be found," according to the report.

The boy turned up again outside the building, at North Street and Kennedy Boulevard, where he told people he was lost and needed help, according to the report. A woman on her way to an appointment in Union City saw him and brought him with her to a health center in that city, where she called police at about 4:45 p.m., the report says.

Jersey City police drove to the health center with the boy's mother, and the two were reunited, according to police. The boy is reportedly in good health.

School 27, also known as the Alfred E. Zampella School, is where two girls, one of them also 8 years old, disappeared from the Casper program in June 2011 after exiting the school via a back door left unlocked for parents picking up their children. The girls were found nearly four hours later near Washington Park in Union City.

After that incident, the school district said the school's back door would stay locked so that anyone leaving the building would have to walk by a security guard stationed at the front entrance.

Yesterday's events come after two similar incidents in New York City.

Last week, a 15-year-old special needs student in Brooklyn who wandered off from her New York City school was found unharmed three days later at her friend's house.

In January, the body of a Avonte Oquendo, a 14-year-old autistic student, was tragically found in the East River, months after he disappeared from his school in Queens.

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