Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Parents of boy left in van want details

The parents of a 3-year-old boy who was left in a Head Start van on Wednesday were not told by the school what had happened until five days later, they said Monday.

The incident, which occurred after a field trip to the dentist, has the parents of 3-year-old Christian Marin, Hector Valencia and Monica Garcia, saying they can no longer trust the program, and they still wonder exactly what happened to their son. They said the boy is fine physically but is wary about being left alone.

The boy's parents said they had to ask for a meeting Monday with Herb Kaufman Head Start center director Florence Liu and they complained that they were left Monday evening still waiting for a written account of the incident they had been told they would receive.

"I was wondering if they were ever going to tell me," Garcia said when she came out of the 1 p.m. meeting into the afternoon heat.

Valencia said he felt there was more the school didn't tell him.

"There's so many things we want to ask, so much we still don't know," Valencia said

"Was he alone for very long? Were the windows open?"

Valencia's mother, Martha Arreguin, who cares for Christian when both parents are working, chimed in, "Was he awake when they found him? He must have been, because he told us, 'They left me alone.' "

When asked about whether the parents had been told of the incident before Monday, Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, and spokesman for the Economic Opportunity Board, the agency that runs Head Start, said: "The parents were not immediately notified -- you can make out of that whatever you want."

Neal said the EOB reacted appropriately to the incident, including having employees communicate about the child's whereabouts and condition, returning the child safely and later disciplining the Head Start employees who failed to notice that Christian had been left asleep on the van.

"The important thing is to have procedures and follow them," Neal said.

The boy was left in the van at the EOB's transportation yard at Bonanza Road and H Street, about 20 minutes by car from Herb Kaufman. He apparently was found after a Head Start employee noticed he was missing and called the transportation division office sometime after 4 p.m., though there are discrepancies between the division's and the center's accounts.

Frank Krukoski, head of the transportation division, said he reported the incident to Metro Police Friday morning.

Detective Colin Haynes of Metro's abuse and neglect detail said a detective will be looking at the facts of the case in the coming days and will determine if evidence warrants submitting an affidavit to the district attorney's office to pursue charging the agency for neglect.

"We take all cases where children are left in vehicles very seriously," Haynes said.

Neal said the agency fired the employee who failed to make sure all seven children who had gone on the afternoon trip to the dentist got off the van when it returned to Herb Kaufman.

And the Head Start nurse who was driving the van was suspended for three days, Neal said.

Valencia and Garcia said they became increasingly concerned about their son when he wasn't at the center at 4:20 p.m. Wednesday.

Garcia and Arreguin had gone together to the center at that hour; Arreguin was picking up her 4-year-old twin sons Sergio and Antonio, who were on the same van as Christian.

Garcia waited awhile and then arranged for her husband to come and wait for their son. Valencia said he noticed the teachers were nervous when he asked them about his son's whereabouts. They told Valencia the boy was still at the dentist.

When Valencia asked where the dentist was so he could pick up his son himself, different teachers gave him different answers, he said.

"They said, 'Don't worry, he probably got stuck in traffic.' I thought, 'You're the teacher, I have to trust you're telling the truth.' "

But meanwhile, the center was calling the transportation division, officials later explained. Krukoski said a call came to his dispatcher at about 4:05 p.m.

"He ran inside, shouted for the supervisor," Krukoski said. A spare key was taken to open the van and the boy was brought into the division's office, he said.

The van's doors were locked and its windows were closed before the child was found, he said.

"When I arrived at about 4:20, the child was watching cartoons and I checked him to see how he was and gave him some cookies," Krukoski said.

But Garcia said the written account of the incident that Liu showed to her and Valencia indicated that the center's employees didn't realize Christian was missing until 4:20 -- more or less the same time that Garcia and Arreguin arrived and asked for their children. Liu said she couldn't give the parents the report until her supervisor gave her approval.

Garcia and Valencia also said they weren't clear about when the van left Herb Kaufman with Christian on board, since the van arrived before they did, and said they had received conflicting information about this.

A teacher told them the van came back from the dentist at 3:30 p.m., but Liu told them it was closer to 4 p.m., the boy's parents said.

In any case, a driver from the transportation division took the boy back to the center by about 5:30 p.m.. Valencia still thought his son had been at the dentist the whole time and took him home.

Arreguin said the center called her Friday morning to tell her that Christian had been left on the van, perhaps because she picks him up from the center when the boy's parents are working.

Arreguin then told each of the boy's parents -- often apart for long hours because of differing work shifts at local casinos -- by Friday night.

Garcia said she then asked her son how school was on the weekend.

"He said, 'You left me on the bus.' When I asked him if he wanted to go back to school, he said, 'Yes, but don't make me get on the bus.' "

Neal said he was aware of only one other case in which a Head Start child was left on a vehicle and that it occurred within the last five years.

He said the program has no policy for dealing with psychological impact of such an incident on children.

The nonprofit agency's response to Wednesday's incident differed greatly from Clark County School District's response to potentially traumatic incidents that have occurred in recent months.

Last August, a school district bus struck a motorcycle, killing the rider. While no students were injured in the crash, the school district contacted the parents of each child and sent a letter home. Counselors were on hand to talk to students.

Similarly, when a man with a gun burst into Galloway Elementary School in Henderson January 21, the school district sent out a press release and letter to parents the following day.

Standing outside Herb Kaufman Monday afternoon, Arreguin said programs such as Head Start are all a working family like hers has to help juggle their jobs and their children.

"You have to go to work, leave the kids here and trust that they'll take care of them," she said.

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