Missing Boy Found With Wrong Class

The parents of 4-year-old Salvador Delgado believed for several heart-pounding hours Monday that their little boy had become the latest statistic in a summer marked by a string of high-profile kidnappings.

The kindergartener was attending his first day at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School, just southeast of downtown Los Angeles. But when his mother stopped by his classroom, she didn’t see her son, Principal Cynthia Williams said.

Administrators searched the school and called the boy’s name over the public address system, but he did not respond. At 9 a.m., police were called.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division set up a six-square-block perimeter. Officials dispatched a helicopter, 30 officers and a team of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department search dogs to look for the boy, said LAPD Officer Jack Richter.

Without witnesses to corroborate a kidnapping, police held off issuing an Amber alert, named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old from Texas who was abducted and killed in 1996. Police transmit information about missing children to other law enforcement agencies and the media, as well as on electronic freeway signs.

The system, new to California, received attention after being used in the kidnappings earlier this month of two teenage girls from the Antelope Valley and in the disappearance of Jessica Cortez, 4, of Echo Park.

Around lunchtime, Salvador was spotted close to where he had last been seen--near the cafeteria among the upper-grade students.

The relieved parents, Ezeikel and Mercedes Lopez of Los Angeles, threw their arms around their son and asked where he had been.

“He told me he was outside and a teacher told him to get in the back of the line, so he got in the back of the line,” Mercedes Lopez said.

When school started, Salvador, who is tall for his age, had accidentally lined up with fourth graders and was marched off to their class, school officials said.