Queens Family Demands Answers After Autistic Teen Wanders Away From School, Found In Manhattan
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A missing teenager with autism was found safe and sound after wandering off from school on Monday.
Now her family is demanding answers from the Queens school that let her disappear.
The girl ended up at a bus stop on the corner of Broadway and West 57th in Manhattan – nearly 13 miles from where she was last seen in Fresh Meadows after her family says she wandered away from her school.
It was early Monday afternoon, when family members say 14-year-old Ashilly Salce grabbed her backpack and walked out of the Phyllis L. Susser School in Queens, a Birch Family Services facility, where she'd been a summer school student for less than two weeks.
Ashilly has autism and her family says she functions at the level of a three-year-old.
When staff noticed her missing they called police and her family. Her uncle was able to trace her movements to a bus stop several blocks away.
Surveillance videos recorded her trying to get into a stranger's car, waving at an unknown couple, and then disappearing. It's unclear if she gets into another stranger's car or boards the bus.
The teen would later turn up at the Manhattan bus stop where a good Samaritan noticed she was in trouble and called 911.
After more than seven hours, her family finally got the news she'd been found.
They're wondering how the school, which is dedicated to helping special needs children, could have let this happen in the first place.
"We trusted them to take care of her… that she's not going to exit that school because we know once she exits that school, it's a three-year-old running around the streets of New York," her uncle Nelson Estrella said.
"They should have put some type of parent or another person to watch her or should have some type of security at the door for this thing not to happen."
CBS2 reached out to Birch Family Services who said no one was available for an on camera interview.
They issued a statement saying in part, "we are now investigating what occurred and reviewing our policies and procedures to determine whether any changes are necessary."
The spokesperson would not provide any details about what the facility's current policy actually is.
