Couple Not Aware Girl Was Missing

Orange County sheriff’s deputies spent Saturday investigating how a 4-year-old girl managed to wander away from her San Clemente home without her parents realizing she had been missing for more than 14 hours.

The parents of Kiana O’Leary contacted the Sheriff’s Department about 7:35 a.m. Saturday after learning that deputies had found their daughter roaming the neighborhood the day before, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.

The couple did not realize Kiana was missing until a relative alerted them after seeing TV news reports about the girl, who was found by deputies about 5:30 p.m. Friday, he said. The department did not release the parents’ names.

Deputies discovered the girl after a passerby spotted her on a street corner by the Shorecliff Golf Course, about a half a mile from her home, and called the Sheriff’s Department, Amormino said.

Not knowing where Kiana lived, deputies took the girl to Orangewood Children’s Home. They then spent five hours knocking on doors in the neighborhood in a fruitless search for her parents, Amormino said. Her parents never reported her missing, he said.

Amormino said Kiana wandered off while home with her mother. Her father, he said, was out with the family’s three other children at the time. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

Kiana remained at Orangewood on Saturday and will probably spend today there, Amormino said. Meanwhile, officials will try to unravel how she went missing and why her disappearance was unnoticed for so long.