Six toddlers, around two years old, walked out of a daycare facility in the Neveh Gan neighborhood of Petach Tikva earlier this week and wandered the streets alone, with three of them reaching nearly a kilometer from the building before a passerby found them and alerted police.
Officers from the Petach Tikva station in the Central District opened an investigation after receiving a report of several toddlers spotted wandering without adult supervision, riding toy cars near a daycare in the city.
Police arrived at the scene, located the children, and arranged for them to be returned to their parents.
Investigators launched a probe into the circumstances of the incident, taking statements, collecting evidence, and using technological tools.
As part of the investigation, two female staff members from the daycare, Petach Tikva residents in their 40s and 50s, were detained for questioning Monday night and later released under restrictive conditions.
One mother told reporters she had dropped her son off at the daycare in the morning, and after noticing the floor was dirty, asked staff to clean the area. About fifteen minutes later, she received a phone call from the daycare director saying her son had left the facility and they could not locate him.
The mother told N12: "In one moment I went from a mother who left her son in a framework that was supposed to protect him and watch over him, to a mother forced to search for her toddler out of real fear for his life and safety."
She said four toddlers left riding on toy cars and two others walked out on foot. One toddler was found on stairs near the daycare's emergency gate, and two were discovered in a playground on the street.
The search for three additional toddlers continued for about fifteen minutes, she said, until they were located nearly a kilometer from the daycare, having reached the area of a busy road, where the passerby who called police spotted them.
