31 March 2023
LOUISBURG, Kan. — March 14 is a day Katie Stegner will never forget after she found out her child got out of Granny’s Schoolhouse and walked into the street.
According to records from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, at 7:49 a.m. that day, Stegner’s 2-year-old child, who she did not want to name, walked out of room one of the building. Three minutes later, he walked out the door of the building.
“A medical staff member across the street had to slam on her brakes to avoid hitting him running across the street,” Stegner said while crying in an interview with FOX4 Thursday.
At 7:56 a.m. March 14, the woman who saw him outside brought him back in. The child wasn’t hurt.
“It took her a few minutes of pounding on the windows to get anybody to know, and she said she just saw two adults talking and they nonchalantly came to the door,” Stegner said. “She was holding my son, and they told her they didn’t know he was missing. They didn’t know he was gone.”
Sondra Gilmore, director of Granny’s Schoolhouse, said she wasn’t at the building at the time this happened. However, she believes the child was able to open both a wooden door near the front desk and the door that gets you fully outside.
“You’ve got to put your hip into it,” Gilmore told FOX4 about the door before you go outside. “This is how he got out. I don’t see how he got out, but he’s a strong one, but he did.”
Unfortunately for Gilmore, no one was there to see the child go through the doors because the worker at the front desk went to go change a diaper, she said.
“They shouldn’t have been,” Gilmore said of the worker. “Well, we can’t let him smell. Well, you know, we can’t let him get run over either, you know, so you don’t do it. You wait until somebody else can assist you. You have to be at the front desk.”
Since this incident, Gilmore’s had her security company, Home Land Security & Electronics, put in an Elopement Detection System at the door next to the front desk. It basically acts as a laser that’s close to the ground. It goes off if a child walks through that door.