Scary moments for one Fort Worth mother during the first few days of school pick-up after her autistic seven-year-old first-grader wasn't where he should have been.
Taylor Grantham said on Wednesday, that she was running late picking up her son from Hatley Elementary School, which is part of Eagle-Mountain Saginaw Independent School District.
When Grantham arrived, her son wasn't in the front office, where students get picked up late.
She said two teachers told her that staff had put him in a car.
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The school district has a system where students have cards with their information, which is matched up to a card on the pick-up car with the same information.
"And I looked at them and I said, ‘This is the card. I’m a single parent, full custody, nobody else could have picked up my son,'” Grantham said.
She said she also called her sister, whose son also attends the school, and her son's father-- but no one had her son.
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Grantham said that about a half hour later, the staff reunited her with her son, saying they found him in the wrong grade's pick-up line.
"Just really terrible, because I thought someone took my kid. And I just freaked out. And I started having a panic attack," she said. “I have not slept since this incident. I have not eaten since this incident, so it’s just kind of taken a toll on me.”
“All I wanted them to do was acknowledge the seriousness of what happened and actually feel something about it," Grantham added.
In a statement to NBC 5, the school district maintains that the first-grader was in the wrong dismissal area the whole time.
"When lining up for dismissal, the first-grade student sat in the kindergarten dismissal line instead of the first-grade line. His mom arrived to pick him up later than normal, and the first-grade dismissal area was empty since all of the other first-grade students had been picked up. The front office staff radioed everyone on duty, and the student was located in the kindergarten dismissal area and was brought to his mom," wrote Matthew LeBlanc, a school district spokesperson.
LeBlanc said according to their logs and video, the reunification happened within 10 minutes of Grantham's arrival at the front office.
He said on Thursday, staff made sure Grantham's son got in the correct dismissal line.
