 A young boy went missing from Letcher Elementary School on Monday afternoon after recess. Now his parents want answers to find out from school officials how this happened and what's going to be done to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. Yesterday I received a call while at work from the school saying there had been an incident with our son. He's five years old in kindergarten here and apparently he managed to walk off the playground, which you can see is not completely fenced in. It's right beside a busy road, right beside railroad tracks, obviously dangerous. He managed to walk off and walked around 1.2 miles down Highway 7 South. We asked him why he did this. He basically just said that he missed his daddy and he was going to walk home to see him. He almost made it and he made it about halfway there and thankfully a good Samaritan pulled up, saw him, stopped to see exactly what was going on to check on him. They stayed with him until the school personnel arrived. Fortunately the boy was spotted walking down a nearby road by a good Samaritan who helped ensure the boy was returned to his school safely. However, while that would normally be the end of a story such as this, according to the fugits the issues they're currently advocating for actually started there. As they were unaware their son was missing until he had already been located by neighbors and school officials. We're not entirely for sure. They're reviewing the cameras to try and see if they can see exactly when he wandered off the playground and for how long, you know, he was actually gone. I think it was around one PM when they first noticed him missing or when he wandered off. I was called at 1.36, so almost 40 minutes later. That's the issue. Yes, and it was actually after they had found him before they even notified us. So we truly weren't even aware that our child was missing. The fugits say that school officials weren't able to say how long the boy had been missing. They were told that it had only been a few minutes, but as both his parents and the police were not notified until after the boy had been returned to the school, there's no way to know for sure until a full investigation has been completed. We've talked to a dispatcher and that dispatcher told us that they was never notified at the state police post. On the Electric County website, it does say their policy is the first thing to do, the first plan of action is to call 911. Second on the list was to call the parents, and neither one of those are done. So we're going to advocate for this until there's safer measures put in place. Here at Pikeville Medical Center's Heart and Vascular Institute, we have assembled a comprehensive team of cardiac specialists bringing expertise from all regions of the nation and the world. We have coupled that with cutting-edge technology providing them the best equipment and operating rooms available. The result is comprehensive cardiac care for the people of our region that is second to none. The Heart and Vascular Institute at Pikeville Medical Center. This is the same path that the student walked along which took him approximately 1.2 miles from school grounds. His parents say that due to his unwillingness to get into a vehicle with strangers, those who were trying to assist the boy followed him to make sure he was safe before eventually returning him to the school. So we expressed our concerns to the superintendent this morning that not only, number one, the playground was not fenced in. It's in a dangerous area. Two, they need to have better supervision of the playground. The teachers state that they were sitting up on a bench in a picnic table at the front of the playground. Our son escaped at the back of the playground, so he was not in their view, basically. And we expressed our concern of the competence of their staff regarding the policies and procedures of what you do if you have a lost child. You know, you call 911, you call the parents. They didn't either. So she is supposedly looking into it, hopefully working on a plan of action to get a fence around the school, maybe in service some of the staff and make a policy so that it doesn't happen again. The what ifs is what is just so scary. You know, you think a five-year-old walking a mile down the road by himself and you can see it's a narrow winding road with not much room. He could have been hit by a car, bit by a snake, attacked by a dog, fell in the river, abducted, you know, passed out from exhaustion and dehydration. I mean, the possibilities are endless. You don't think something like that's going to happen to you, but here we are. The parents would like once more to extend the heartfelt thanks to the strangers who helped rescue their child from what could have been a much worse situation. The school board has declined to speak with us for now, citing the ongoing investigation. For Mountaintop News, I'm Joshua Sloan.