Pro-tip for families planning to visit a corn maze this fall: It doesn't count as solving the maze if your children don't make it out with you.
One family failed to heed that advice and left a 3-year-old boy behind at the Crazy Corn Maze in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah, Monday night. The mother failed to notice her son was missing until the next morning.
An unrelated guest found the boy near the maze entrance at about 7:30 p.m. MT.
"He was crying and upset and obviously scared," Kendall Schmidt, who runs the maze, told The Washington Post.
"We couldn’t get him to give us his name," Schmidt added. "He could say his brother’s name and his cat’s name, but not his own name."
An off-duty police officer let the boy watch a movie on a laptop in her patrol car while staff members walked through the maze with a bullhorn trying to find the parents. When they couldn't find his family, they waited for someone to return for the boy.
Closing time came and went, but no one ever arrived. The Utah Division of Child and Family Services kept the boy overnight.
The child's mother woke up Tuesday morning and finally noticed he was missing.
"She realized she may have left him at the corn maze and called us," West Jordan police Sgt. Joe Monson told The Salt Lake Tribune. The Division of Child and Familly Services told police the mother would be subject to questioning before the boy could be returned to her custody.
Monson said the mother arrived at the police station with about 10 children, according to the Associated Press.
"This was a case of multiple families with multiple children living in the same home," Monson told the Tribune, adding that the DCFS was investigating the incident.
Contributing: Francis Lally, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, Neptune, N.J.
One family failed to heed that advice and left a 3-year-old boy behind at the Crazy Corn Maze in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah, Monday night. The mother failed to notice her son was missing until the next morning.
An unrelated guest found the boy near the maze entrance at about 7:30 p.m. MT.
"He was crying and upset and obviously scared," Kendall Schmidt, who runs the maze, told The Washington Post.
"We couldn’t get him to give us his name," Schmidt added. "He could say his brother’s name and his cat’s name, but not his own name."
An off-duty police officer let the boy watch a movie on a laptop in her patrol car while staff members walked through the maze with a bullhorn trying to find the parents. When they couldn't find his family, they waited for someone to return for the boy.
Closing time came and went, but no one ever arrived. The Utah Division of Child and Family Services kept the boy overnight.
The child's mother woke up Tuesday morning and finally noticed he was missing.
"She realized she may have left him at the corn maze and called us," West Jordan police Sgt. Joe Monson told The Salt Lake Tribune. The Division of Child and Familly Services told police the mother would be subject to questioning before the boy could be returned to her custody.
Monson said the mother arrived at the police station with about 10 children, according to the Associated Press.
"This was a case of multiple families with multiple children living in the same home," Monson told the Tribune, adding that the DCFS was investigating the incident.
Contributing: Francis Lally, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, Neptune, N.J.
