Preschool abandons 3-year-old in woods
Staff at a preschool in Nyköping south of Stockholm on Wednesday left a 3-year-old child alone in the forest for 45 minutes after failing to count him when they were returning to the school.
“It wasn’t until the children and the staff returned to the preschool that they discovered Harry wasn’t with them,” said mother Rebecka Liljegren to the local Södermanlands Nyheter.
Harry had been missing for almost an hour when two people in the wood discovered him. Liljegren received a call around 1.30pm from the preschool head asking her to come to the school to talk “about Harry”.
“They wanted to talk about something that had happened to Harry. They didn’t want to say what it was over the phone,” Liljegren told the paper.
“The teacher left me in the forest," was the first thing that Harry told his mother when she arrived at the preschool, she told the paper.
The parents were shocked to hear that their child had been left alone in the wood.
More disturbing to them, however, was the fact that no one had counted the children prior to returning to school and that the school failed to call the parents or police when they discovered Harry was missing.
“This kind of thing should not be possible and it is a mystery how it happened as the staff that were present are very experienced," said preschool head Erik Rudholm to Sveriges Radio (SR).
All the area preschool heads and principals attended a crisis meeting on Thursday to get to the bottom of how a child could have been left and a committee has been appointed to create an action plan to prevent anything similar from happening again.
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“It wasn’t until the children and the staff returned to the preschool that they discovered Harry wasn’t with them,” said mother Rebecka Liljegren to the local Södermanlands Nyheter.
Harry had been missing for almost an hour when two people in the wood discovered him. Liljegren received a call around 1.30pm from the preschool head asking her to come to the school to talk “about Harry”.
“They wanted to talk about something that had happened to Harry. They didn’t want to say what it was over the phone,” Liljegren told the paper.
“The teacher left me in the forest," was the first thing that Harry told his mother when she arrived at the preschool, she told the paper.
The parents were shocked to hear that their child had been left alone in the wood.
More disturbing to them, however, was the fact that no one had counted the children prior to returning to school and that the school failed to call the parents or police when they discovered Harry was missing.
“This kind of thing should not be possible and it is a mystery how it happened as the staff that were present are very experienced," said preschool head Erik Rudholm to Sveriges Radio (SR).
All the area preschool heads and principals attended a crisis meeting on Thursday to get to the bottom of how a child could have been left and a committee has been appointed to create an action plan to prevent anything similar from happening again.
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