6-year-old boy goes missing in Toyonaka

Oh no, Teita. Please come home safe and sound.

And in light of the fact that he is a "special needs" student, surely more info should be made available (such as whether he can speak coherently and answer questions about his name and age, etc).

I sincerely hope that this child is found quickly and is safe as well.

That being said in all sincerity I now have to ask how can any child just "walk" out of a care facility let alone one that is supposedly a special needs institution? There is something seriously wrong with any child care facility that allows something like this to happen.

I pray for a safe return, and for the strength of the family

The teacher was out of the room for about 10 minutes and during that time, the boy disappeared TV Asahi reported.

Is it regular practice to leave a 6 year old special needs child by himself? I would investigate this school and teacher for negligence.

We need an Amber alert system here in Japan. Time and time again it takes days for the public to be fully aware of missing children. It's not good enough!

I go to a special needs school that covers elementary through high school about once a week for work. There is absolutely no way that they would allow a student to be alone by themselves for 10 minutes. Most of the time we have 1 teacher/guardian per 2 students in the class. Not only should this child not have been left alone for 10 minutes by himself, if there was only one adult supervising and they absolutely needed to leave the classroom to go to the washroom (10 minutes seems a bit much), then they should at least have a way to lock the door from the outside of the classroom. I hope this teacher is held fully responsible for the disappearance and that the child is found soon.

It seems that he has a developmental disorder, and cannot say his own name or address.

I’m strongly inclined to agree with most here that there is no conceivable excuse for why a 6-year-old special needs student was left alone at all, much less for ten minutes, which is a remarkably long span of time when it comes to the sort of mischief children can find themselves in with far less.

Was the child abducted? Did he wander away? Why are there no auto-locks on the entrances and exits? Why is there apparently no security camera at the same locations? The security cameras are a standard fixture at almost every school I’ve ever set foot in, particularly in light of violent and brutal school invasions that have resulted in a number of dead children. The school and school board needs to answer some very pointed questions about how this was allowed to happen.

We expect our children to be relatively safe when we place them in the care of public schools, special needs or otherwwise. When someone wanders into a school, intent on doing harm, that’s one thing. But when a child simply disappears from the school premises with nary an explanation, that’s more than sufficient cause for public anger.

In the meantime, yes, more details about specifically what needs this child has would be very helpful, as would reaching a national consensus in the need for something like an Amber Alert system, as employed in the US. Opponents might argue that the number of children missing do to foul play is so low as to negate the need for such a system, but really, isn't just one child missing one too many?

Haven't heard any updates on this news. I hope poor Teita is alright....