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Cops: Mom Left Toddler in Maze, Realized Morning After

3-year-old had already been rescued by the time she called
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 11, 2017 10:51 AM CDT
Day After Visiting Maze, Mom Realizes 3-Year-Old Is Lost
The boy is safe after being left behind in a corn maze.   (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

Family members tell police they didn't notice that a 3-year-old boy was missing when they left a corn maze in Utah on Monday night. Nor did they notice his absence at bedtime, or overnight. Indeed, it was shortly before 8am Tuesday that the mother of the boy finally called police, reports KUTV. It had then been some 12 hours since a woman had discovered the crying boy alone at the Crazy Corn Maze in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan and brought him to the maze owners. Because the boy only revealed his age and the names of his brother and cat, the owners went car to car and throughout the maze, announcing that a lost child had been found, per KSL. The boy was finally turned over to the Department of Child and Family Services when no one claimed him.

On Tuesday morning, the boy's mother "woke up and noticed he was missing," West Jordan police officer Joe Monson tells the Salt Lake Tribune. "She realized she may have left him at the corn maze and called us." Police issued no citations, but DCFS is investigating why "it took so long for them to realize the child was missing," Monson tells KUTV. It "sounds like this is a dwelling with multiple families and a lot of children living in the same home," he says, telling the AP the mother eventually turned up at the police station with 10 kids in tow. A DCFS rep tells Fox 13 "we don't want to jump to any conclusions" but are "concerned mainly about the safety of the child." It wasn't clear whether the boy is back with his family. (A town rallied to find this 3-year-old lost in a cornfield.)

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