Nonverbal Boy, 5, Went Missing After Mistakenly Being Placed on School Bus

A mother in Texas is speaking out after her nonverbal 5-year-old son went missing after allegedly mistakenly being placed on a school bus.

Kimberlee Gonzalez, from the city of Kingsville, has claimed she went to pick her children up on Thursday, Oct. 30, from Jesus R. Perez Elementary. However, she was left “very heartbroken” after realizing her son Zayden wasn’t there, per local outlet Kris 6 News.

She told the television station, “I was terrified,” adding that the school “started looking for him inside the school, all over campus, and came back out and said he was nowhere to be found.”

Kingsville Police Department officers got involved in the search for the missing youngster and reviewed surveillance footage, before discovering he’d been placed on a wrong bus by mistake, according to the outlet. Zayden was reportedly found hours after school had ended on a bus near Gillett Intermediate School, which is over two miles away from his elementary school.

Gonzalez shared multiple posts on Oct. 30 documenting the incident on Facebook, asking for the public’s help in finding her missing son.

“Thank yall everyone for the support they found him asleep in the back of the bus,” she later said, adding that her son isn’t a bus rider.

Gonzalez told Kris 6 News that an assistant principal at the school had told her that the incident occurred after a substitute teacher mixed up names, thinking Zayden was a bus rider rather than a car rider.

The mom said that the situation was made all the more worrying given that her son is nonverbal.

“He doesn’t talk, imagine if he would have got dropped off somewhere. Something would have happened to him. Somebody, I mean, he could have got ran over. Like, nowadays, there’s a lot of things that could happen,” Gonzalez told the station.

Kingsville Independent School District (ISD) Superintendent Dr. Luz Martinez called Zayden’s incident “deeply concerning” and said it “should [not have] happened,” adding, “The safety of every student is our highest priority, and any lapse in our transportation procedures requires immediate action on our part,” according to Kris 6 News.

She added in a statement, “To immediately address this situation, we met with all principals and transportation staff to review expectations and reinforce safety procedures.”

“In addition, employee discipline has been administered where appropriate. We will continue deploying Central Office staff to support dismissal procedures at all elementary schools and will collaborate with campus principals and transportation staff to streamline dismissal procedures,” Martinez shared, per the station.

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She acknowledged that this hadn’t been the first incident involving transportation and a student this school year. The district is now set to make changes, including adding a sibling buddy system, a bus seating chart, having students wear bus badges to identify them and more.

PEOPLE has reached out to an assistant principal at Jesus R. Perez Elementary, Kingsville Independent School District (ISD) Superintendent Dr. Luz Martinez and Kingsville Police Department for additional information, but didn’t immediately hear back. PEOPLE has also contacted Gonzalez for further comments.