Boy’s early-morning walk has a safe ending

By Denise Dick

The grandmother called the boy’s parents, who drove to the village looking for him.

NEW MIDDLETOWN — Five-year-old Austin Leipply set off on his own early Sunday, trying to walk to his home in Springfield Township from his grandmother’s Sandy Drive home.

Village police received a call Sunday morning of a small child running on state Route 170. A police officer found the boy, who was wearing his pajamas, a coat and shoes. The boy could tell them only his first name, said Chief Vincent D’Egidio.

Police took the boy back to the station and found a name tag sewn into Austin’s jacket.

“Mom and Dad dropped the boy and his sister off at grandma’s house to spend the night, and for some reason, he decided he wanted to go home,” D’Egidio said.

About 6 a.m., the boy got up, put on his shoes and coat and left his grandmother’s Sandy Drive residence, planning to walk to his home on South Range Road in New Springfield.

“I got up and saw he wasn’t there, and I called for him, but he didn’t answer,” said the boy’s grandmother, Margaret Leipply. “The first thing I looked for was his coat, and then I saw that the door was unlocked.”

She called his parents. The parents drove to the village, looking for the boy before calling 911.

The 911 dispatcher told the parents the boy was at the police station, and they went there to pick him up, the chief said.

D’Egidio estimated about a half-hour passed between the boy’s leaving his grandmother’s home and being reunited with his family.

“They brought him back here and made him apologize,” Margaret Leipply said. The boy is fine but missed his mother, she said.

“I was glad that someone saw him,” the grandmother said,

Police stress that parents should talk with their children about knowing their address and telephone number.

D’Egidio said that if a parent or a caregiver notices a child is missing, they should call 911 immediately to get police involved.

“We’d rather be working on it right away than lose those precious minutes,” he said.

Village police work with the A Child is Missing program and will offer resources to the public. The public may sign up to receive text or e-mail alerts from the program when a child goes missing, increasing the likelihood of a safe return.

People can sign up at www. achildismissing.org.

Child-identification kits are available at the village municipal building on Main Street.

The program reports that a child goes missing every 40 seconds in the United States and that a child has a 1-in-42 chance of going missing.

denise_dick@vindy.com