Mother claims autistic daughter wandered from school

SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, Fla. (WSVN) -- A mother is claiming her autistic daughter wandered away from school and a total stranger found her.

"In her little world she's happy," said Elena Diaz-Orta.

Diaz-Orta's 7-year-old daughter is autistic and speaks very little. Her daughter attended Carrie Brazer Center for Autism during the summer and the beginning of this school year. "I had so much faith in them," she said.

Diaz-Orta said Sunday she received a strange phone call at her home from a woman, who would not give her name. "She said that she couldn't sleep and that something bad had happened to [my daughter] on Friday and that no one told me," the mother said. "So, my immediate reaction was she got molested or something."

Instead, the woman told Diaz-Orta that her daughter slipped out of school and everyone was looking for her, until a man showed up. "She said a stranger was holding her hand and brought her back in," she said.

The girl's mother said the man supposedly knew where to take her daughter, because of her school t-shirt, which has the name of the school and phone number on it. The man dropped her daughter off and left.

The Department of Children and Families has launched its own investigation and wants to speak to the man. "We just want to identify that person and be able to speak to him, to get some background information," said Flora Beal. "Right now it's difficult to even get a complete understanding of what actually happened."

What DCF investigators want confirm and Diaz-Orta claims is that no one reported the 7-year-old's disappearance to authorities or her mother.

The school's founder/owner disagrees. "We made several attempts to contact her and I spoke to her directly and so did Francine," said Carrie Brazer.

Brazer said the 7-year-old ran from a cubby to the classroom door and was gone for less than a minute. She said that same day they installed a new secure door system. "I think that we acted 100 percent effectively, efficiently and quickly and returned her back to her seat within seconds," said Brazer. "She was unharmed and that's the most important thing."

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