Lawrence daycare staff leaves child in locked van during field trip

LAWRENCE, Kan. - Staff at a Lawrence, Kansas daycare center mistakenly left a child alone in a van, while the rest of their class went on a field trip last Friday. 

Field trips for Hilltop Child Development Center are now on hold after the incident. Hilltop is a private, non-profit daycare center affiliated with KU.

Hilltop staff left the child in a locked van for an "extended period of time," according to KU Director of News and Media Relations Erinn Barcomb-Peterson.

Working for you, we asked exactly how long the child was left in the vehicle, how old the child was and how many children were in the class. Barcomb-Peterson has not responded.

She said a Hilltop teacher later found the child alone, locked in the van. Also noting that the child was "upset, but unharmed".

Hilltop notified the child's parents immediately and alerted other daycare families.

“I don't understand how anybody can ever forget about a kid,” John Faler's said.

His child doesn't go to Hilltop. They live outside of town and frequent Lawrence. Faler believes situations like this are avoidable.

“How do you get hired for a job to watch kids, and you forget them? I understand you've got a lot going on, so does everybody else,” Faler said. “We just came back from a field trip and there were several people that counted as the kids came off the bus, counted as they came out.”

Hilltop is licensed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and accredited by the National Association for Education of Young Children, according to the daycare center’s website.

Staff reported the incident to both agencies.

"Appropriate corrective action will be taken," KU Administration told FOX4

All field trips have been “suspended while Hilltop reviews the specifics of this incident, the center’s procedures and its policies.”