Shoeless, coatless 4-year-old heads home alone in snow from church learning center, prompting state investigation

May 28—A whoopsie while using the bathroom at preschool on a cold January afternoon led 4-year-old Riker Price to this conclusion: He needed to go home and change his clothes.

The towheaded boy left the restroom, exited the front door of the Learning Center at Woodland Park Community Church and headed toward his neighborhood, which is about a mile away.

Riker didn't retrieve his shoes and coat from the classroom; outside, a few inches of snow covered the ground, and the temperature was below freezing.

But that didn't deter Riker. He was on a mission, one that he would never complete, but which still prompts people to knock on wood because of its happy ending.

His trek nevertheless has left his parents sad, confused and concerned.

"There's nothing like the fear of a missing kid," said his mother, Miranda Leilani Price.

And the church's longtime child care center has been forced to make safety, security and training improvements to continue operating and is facing possible disciplinary measures pending a state investigation.

"It's appalling," Price said. "He made it 0.8 miles along a busy highway. Someone could have snatched him off the road and took him."

Riker's journey ended safely, but the anguish has continued for his parents, who believe the center mishandled the situation by delaying notification of the missing child not only to them but also to authorities.

Riker walked out of the Learning Center and away from the school at 1:37 p.m. Jan. 19, according to an email the center sent to all parents at 4:24 p.m. that same day.

A teacher had checked on him a few times when he was in the bathroom, asking if he was OK, and Riker said he was pooping, according to a Department of Human Services report compiled the following day.

It was naptime, and the student did not return to the classroom after using the restroom, the director's email to parents said.

"Teachers noticed the absence and we searched inside the building and notified the parents," it read.

The email does not give a timeline or details of the scenario.

Video footage shows Riker skipping through a common area before using all of his might to push open the center's front door.

Riker was outside the church for eight minutes before any staff member realized he was missing, the human services' Division of Child Welfare report from January states.

And, Price said she was not notified that her son was no longer on school grounds until 2:08 p.m.

"The police were already at the church, prior to the center director calling me," Price said.

A 911 call came in at 1:43 p.m., according to the police report, by Samantha Trattner, who lives nearby and was working from home that day.

Trattner said she immediately realized something was wrong when she noticed a youngster darting barefoot along a recreational trail that parallels Colorado 67 North.

When she ran outside, she learned Riker wasn't allowed to talk to strangers so she started following him, while at the same time calling police to report a runaway child. While on the move in tandem with Riker, Trattner provided police with updates on the boy's location.

Various law enforcers responded to the emergency call, including an animal control officer, a Teller County sheriff's deputy and several city police officers.

Authorities didn't know who the shivering child was or where he had come from when they caught up with him, the Woodland Park police report says.

Riker provided answers about himself that were difficult to interpret, responders reported, as they bundled him into a police car and tried to figure out Riker's identity.

One police officer who was combing the neighborhood to determine where Riker lived said in his report that he noticed a woman walking outside Woodland Park Community Church as though she was searching for something.

When the officer stopped to ask her if she was looking for someone, "she was very reluctant and hesitant to answer me, she finally did," the officer wrote.

The woman was a worker at the day care center, and she asked Director Kim Leitner to speak to the police. The director told police the child must have left out the back door after he went to the restroom and that she had contacted the child's mother.

Riker's mom, Price, arrived at the center a short time later, the police report said, and the officer told her Riker was safe in a police vehicle and would be returned to the center soon.

"It was 31 minutes from the time he walked out the door until the director called me, and she had never called me or the police before that," Price said.

The center did respond in a timely fashion, said Randy Squires, senior elder, chairman of the Woodland Park Community Church board and head of a working group that's overseeing changes the Learning Center is making.

"The police were called within 10 minutes of the time we knew Riker was missing, and we have since changed our lost child procedure to 5 minutes," Squires said.

Price said the church's timeline of what transpired does not align with police accounts or Department of Human Services findings.

A human services inspection report dated March 6 determined that "law enforcement was not contacted regarding lost child within the time frame stated in the facilities policies and procedures."

Also, the center did not self-report the mishap to Teller County officials overseeing child abuse and neglect allegations until four days after it occurred. The required timeframe to do so is 24 hours.

Police notified Child Protective Services about the event but according to the police report did not file criminal charges against the center or any employees, due to several factors: the good Samaritan rescuing the child, there being no injuries to Riker, the church not having previous incidents of this nature and Price saying she did not want to pursue charges at the time.

Price said she was told she could only file charges against the teacher, and she didn't think that was right, so she declined to do so.

Child Protective Services immediately removed Leitner as center director for three weeks and charged her with institutional neglect, Squires said.

After an investigation, "She was completely expunged through the state," he said. "It doesn't show on her record anywhere."

Leitner has been back on the job since.

She deferred a request for an interview with The Gazette to Squires, who is handling related matters.

The event of a child going missing from a child care center is rare, said Robert Tornabene, spokesman for the Colorado Springs Police Department.

He said he is unaware of any recent cases in El Paso County, and when such an event does occur, the child "might be located quickly and that information most likely would not move its way to our office."

"As anything involving kids in particular, when there are a large number of them, human error may play a factor when this happens," Tornabene said. "It is our hope that these facilities have procedures and measures in place to reduce the risk of a child getting out of a day care center."

In its 20 years of operation, the Learning Center has never lost a child before, Squires said.

The state inspection report from March identified other licensing violations including: Allowing children to go to the bathroom unsupervised, teachers leaving the classroom unattended, hiring staff unqualified for the position, not following its own lost child policy, not properly training staff on the policy, allowing community members to access to the same bathrooms as the children and lacking emergency drills.

The report also noted that the center director interfered or refused to cooperate with a child protection investigation, but did not explain what that meant.

The state Division of Child Welfare report from January said during interviews with staff, a caseworker was "repeatedly questioned by Ms. Leitner about the validity of the caseworker speaking with certain individuals, which impacted the caseworker's ability to conduct the assessment."

The center has taken corrective action, Squires said, to address security, safety and operational faults.

"We implemented new policies and procedures, we have new cameras and door alarms on all the doors, we're getting teachers trained, and we have the oversight board," he said. "We've taken a lot of steps moving forward."

The church and child care center are awaiting the outcome of an adverse action report from the state licensing board, which could result in fines, a probationary period, license suspension or revocation.

The state also is inspecting the center every 27 days, Squires said.

About five weeks after the episode with Price's son, another mother reported to Child Protective Services that she witnessed her 4-year-old son left unsupervised at the church's Learning Center.

Stephanie Cline said when she went to pick up her son on Feb. 27, no one answered the doorbell for three to four minutes.

"The next thing you know, I see my kid's head pop up from behind the check-in desk in the front foyer, with no teacher or adult with him," she said.

Cline said she rang the doorbell again and waited several more minutes until someone came to let her in.

"My son was out there at least five minutes, completely unattended," she said.

Cline said she requested video footage, which was not made available and which had been recorded over when the state came to investigate.

Cline said the church pastor and center director told her that teachers were watching her son from inside the door.

"If that were true, why did it take so long for someone to open the door for me," she said. "If I would have called my son to the door, I would have left with him, and nobody would have known."

The Learning Center has had a longstanding state ranking of four on a scale of five top measures for day care centers, Squires said.

The church's new operational improvement team "is going through everything, looking for potential concerns and problems, and helping get those corrected," he said.

"We are doing everything possible right now that we can to ensure this doesn't happen again," Squires said. "We're pretty serious about making sure all of the bases are covered."

For her kind-hearted and important role in reuniting Riker with his parents, Trattner received a citizens' lifesaving award from Woodland Park Police Chief Chris Deisler at a City Council meeting in March.

The plaque that now hangs in her home office reads: "... had you not intervened, the outcome of this case is unimaginable."

"I definitely put that one on my wall — I'm proud of it," Trattner said.

"I've watched kids being dropped off at school daily," she said. "Look out the window, and you never know what you might see."

On that terrifying day four months ago, Riker received a police badge, promised he wouldn't do anything like that anymore and apologized for his behavior.

Price pulled him out of the preschool and now keeps him by her side at home and while she works as a real estate agent. The fear is still too great, but she said her business has suffered.

Riker is supposed to start kindergarten in August, a step Price said she can't even think about yet.

After the episode, a few other parents removed their children from the center, Squires said, reducing enrollment to about 60 students.

A Division of Child Welfare report dated Jan. 23 said that 65 to 75 children attended the facility on a daily basis at that time.

"We want to still provide the service we provide to the community; there are not a lot of child care facilities up here," Squires said. "It's a good resource to a lot of parents."