A mother in Westchester County says her 5-year-old son, who is nonverbal and has autism, wandered out of school unnoticed.

April Vinson says her son walked away from Jefferson Elementary School in New Rochelle last Wednesday during lunch.

"Such a scary feeling to almost lose your child and to not have people take it seriously enough," Vinson said.

She says she is the one who realized he had disappeared, thanks to an alert on her phone from a tracking app, and called the school.

"They said, 'No, he's fine.' And then there was someone else who said 'Oh, he's right in front of me, he's okay," Vinson said.

Vinson took administrators at their word, but at the end of the school day, when her son was already on the bus home, she got a call from the school admitting the kindergartner had left

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