An 11-year-old on the autism spectrum who disappeared briefly on Friday afternoon from his school in Concord is now safe at home after one San Francisco woman spotted him by a freeway. News crews like ABC 7 were already on the scene at Holbrook Elementary School in Concord after news broke that Zachary Jordan-Smith had escaped through a fence at the school and went missing, when a call came from the San Francisco Police Department that he had been found. He had managed to board BART at North Concord station, near his school, without any money, and ride to his former Head Start school in Bernal Heights, on Ellsworth Street.
Near there, next to I-280, Allison Caruthers spotted Zachary by himself, and as she told KRON 4, "I called the boy and I told him to stop, don’t move. And when the freeway cleared up, I ran over there and I grabbed him."
Caruthers says she walked him across the freeway to safety and then started asking him questions. As she told ABC 7, "I said, 'Are you lost?' and he said, 'Yes I'm lost.' I said, 'Where do you live?' and he mentioned a street I've never heard of. He mentioned Concord and I said, 'Concord, how did you get here?' He said, 'BART,' so I said, 'Oh, so you're missing. I'm going to get you safe and I promise you I'm going to get you to your parents."
Allison Caruthers found Zachary Jordan-Smith. She watches as His parents pick him up from an SFPD station. pic.twitter.com/38f1TpCBOb
— Sergio Quintana (@svqjournalist) April 15, 2016
He was reunited with his parents around 4 p.m.
Now officials at Holbrook Elementary School are trying to figure out how he slipped out of sight without anyone noticing.