Police on Thursday arrested a day care operator in Manhattan who is accused of leaving a four-year-old boy — who ended up wandering the area — alone inside a van.
"I can't imagine what he was going through, looking for his mom or his dad," Jasmin Reynoso said.
When Reynoso got a call from police saying her son, Winter, was found wandering around Washington Heights, she could hardly believe it.
"She told me, 'I'm in the hospital with Winter,'" Reynoso recalled a police official telling her. "I said, 'Winter? Winter's in day care.'"
The four-year-old takes a van to day care each morning, but Reynoso said on Thursday her little boy fell asleep on the way and woke up alone, left behind by the driver.
His parents are outraged. "How did you not check if there was anyone else in the car?" Reynoso said. "How do you just park your car and not look back?"
"They didn't go upstairs and count the kids?" said Edwin Reyes, Winter's father.
After at least an hour in the parked van by himself, Winter apparently got out and started walking, grabbing a boxcutter from a bag he found in the vehicle.
He ended up going from the day care's building on Riverside Drive, all the way to 158th St. and Broadway.
"I said what if he was walking across the street and he got hit by a car?" Reynoso said. "Or met someone and someone could have snatched him up?"
Fortunately, Winter's parents say a good Samaritan found him and called police, who arrested Juan Dominguez Guada, the 38-year-old day care owner and driver. He was charged with non-support of a child.
"He said, 'Why Juan left me?' and I'm just like, I don't know what to tell him," Reynoso said.
Winter was taken to a local hospital as a precaution but was deemed OK. He was in better spirits Thursday evening.
His parents say he won't be going back to the day care. "They need to be more responsible, because I feel like mistakes do happen, but it was a four-year-old wandering around in the streets," Reynoso said.
Main story image above: Winter sits with his mother in their home in New York City.