AURORA, Colo. -- Two parents in Aurora are furious with daycare workers at Star Childcare Academy after they say their 2-year-old son, DJ, was able to seemingly walk out of three doors and into the busy morning parking lot alone.
“If Dont'e hadn't had gone to the bathroom, DJ would have just been walking, if he had caught the next bus to come straight home my baby would have just been outside and that's not okay," said Ashley Williams, DJ’s mother.
Dont’e Brown said he’s the one who dropped DJ off at school and told Denver7 he signed the child in and dropped him off in a back room in the building before going to use the restroom.
Brown told Denver7 that when he went outside to catch the next bus running on Havana Street, he found DJ wandering around near the lane of traffic on Havana.
In looking at the facilities surveillance video, Denver7 found 1 minute 20 seconds between the time DJ left the building and the time Dont’e left.
Dont’e told Denver7 he had no idea DJ was outside.
“Prior to me getting to the street, I look and see, 'who's kid is that?' And then I look and say, 'oh snap, it's my son!' so I run over there and I grab him and he's crying like, tears everywhere, ... picks him up and take him back inside to the daycare,” said Brown. “There's only two people there but like I said, I could see they're overwhelmed.”
“That is not okay, I don't care if he is just like, right there, just that little bit just makes me uneasy because there's no way he should have been able to get out of any of those doors," said Williams.
Denver7 found when going to get the daycare owners side of the story, that while walking in, both front entry doors were not only unlocked, but cracked open.
Denver7 found the state doesn’t require daycare centers to lock their front doors.
Aurora Police wrote up a police report after Williams said she reported this to them, but said no crime was committed.
The daycare didn’t want to comment on the record for this story, only to say that Brown didn’t drop his son off to a teacher and never lost sight of him.
A daycare worker told Denver7 Brown and Williams were upset with the facility and set the whole thing up to have them reported to the state.
“Set up? That's not a set up, my son has been going to this school for three weeks and Dante has been taking him there every morning," said Williams.
Denver7 found there have been several child abuse investigations into the facility over the past few years, but none of those claims have been substantiated.
Denver7 is told this incident is being investigated by the state.
---------
Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.
