Imagine finding out your first-grader with autism got out of his school and ran outside without an adult beside him.
Imagine finding out your first-grader with autism got out of his school and ran outside without an adult beside him.
Now imagine learning about it only when you showed up to pick up your children.
That’s what a South Texas mother says happened to her son this week, and she wants other parents, especially those raising children with special needs, to hear her warning.
Moriama Martinez reached out to me about her son Pablo.
He attends Ted Flores Elementary School in Pearsall, Texas, and she says he has been diagnosed with Level 2 autism.
According to Moriama, the school called her Monday afternoon while she was working. She missed the call, called back two minutes later and says she remained on hold for more than 10 minutes before hanging up.
She says nobody called her again.
When Moriama arrived later to pick up her three children, she noticed Pablo’s backpack sitting in the school office.
That’s when she says she learned her son had “eloped,” meaning he had unexpectedly left the supervised area and gotten outside.
The next day, Moriama returned to watch surveillance video.
She says the video allegedly shows Pablo running down a first-grade hallway and through doors leading outside.
Moriama says she counted approximately 23 seconds before a teacher appeared on that camera and estimates, based on the portions of video she was shown, that Pablo eventually had roughly a 43-second head start.
Thankfully, he was found safe.
But his mother can’t stop thinking about what could have happened.
“I could’ve been coming home to an empty room every day because I put trust in my children’s school,” she told me. “Never again. It’s betrayal.”
And this family’s concerns immediately brought back another story shared with me last year.
In April 2025, the grandmother of another autistic child at Ted Flores Elementary told me her 4-year-old, nonverbal grandson got beyond the school fence, crossed a parking lot and headed toward a residential street.
She told me a truck missed him “by seconds.”
That was that family’s account. Now, more than a year later, Moriama says her autistic son also got outside the school.
For Moriama, this is about something every parent understands: trust.
You leave your child at school believing someone will keep them safe until you return, and for parents of children who may wander or run, those seconds can be terrifying.
“No one cares about your children like you do,” Moriama told me. “And that’s a hard pill to swallow.”
These are the families’ accounts, and Pearsall ISD deserves an opportunity to explain what happened, what the surveillance video shows, what safety measures were in place and whether changes were made following last year’s incident.
If the district provides or publicly releases a statement, I will share it here so parents can hear its response as well.
Thankfully, Pablo came home safely.
If this were your child, what answers would you want from the school?
And share any experience you had with something similar involving a school.
Source: http://Ryan Wolf
