SAFFORD — Safford Police notified Arizona Department of Child Services when a pre-schooler was found wandering near U.S. Highway 70.
Police received a call to respond to the intersection of the highway and 5th Avenue, to speak with a woman who stopped the child as he was trying to walk across the highway.
The child, who was wearing a T-shirt, underwear and no shoes, was carrying a cellular phone and officers attempted to contact multiple numbers in hopes of identifying the child’s parent or guardian. However, the attempts proved unsuccessful.
When another officer arrived on scene, he said he recognized a woman in a photo on the phone. Officers went to the address of the person recognized in the photo, on the 100 block of 8th Avenue, about a half-mile from where the child was discovered, and made contact with a man who identified himself as the child’s father.
The man said the child was 5-years-old and non-verbally autistic. The man said he had locked both the front and back doors before falling asleep, but the child had exited the home through the child’s bedroom window. The man said his son had done that before.
Officers left the child with his father and filed a report with DCS.
