A kindergarten student is okay after wandering away from Moyock Elementary School in Currituck County on Friday.
Assistant Superintendent Sandy Kinzel tells NewsChannel 3 that the incident happened after lunch when students were walking back to their classroom from the cafeteria.
The cafeteria is located in a separate building from the rest of the school.
"I’m very surprised. It's very shocking, but the way the cafeteria is set up – it makes sense how it could happen," explained Christie Newman who has two children at Moyock Elementary.
Kinzel says when it was discovered that the student was not with the class, staff began searching the school including the bathrooms, cafeteria and playground.
Roughly 15 minutes later, the school received a call that the student had been found and taken to the Post Office off Highway 168.
Kinzel says the boy had been spotted near the highway by a passerby and was then taken to the Post Office.
"We are thankful the child was found so quickly by the individual recognizing he was not where he should be and was in a dangerous situation," Kinzel wrote in an e-mail.
"It’s a very busy highway. Just the fact that they got across the street or even near the street is very concerning," Newman said. " I mean it’s a pretty good hike for a little kid to get from the school to 168."
Currituck County School officials says after the boy was found, school officials contacted his parents. In that conversation, his grandmother indicated that he'd been wandering away from home over the past few weeks.
Kinzel said had the school known that, extra supervision would have been in place to monitor the student during transition periods.
Regardless, Kinzel says the school has "taken additional measures to make sure incidents such as this don't happen in the future."
