Boy left charter class, roamed onto tracks
THE MOTHER of an 8-year-old boy found wandering the tracks of a Brooklyn subway station plans to sue his charter school for failing to supervise him before he slipped out.
Little Jahzir Sheppard was supposed to be with his classmates at Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School in BedfordStuyvesant when strangers found him walking along the elevated tracks of a subway station about 10 blocks away.
Worried passengers called police, and were able to persuade the third-grader to get off the tracks before a train arrived.
It was unclear if Jahzir walked a half-mile to the Halsey St. J line station or if he walked upstairs to the platform at Gates Ave., which is closer to the school, and walked along the tracks to the next station.
Either way, witnesses said he was lucky to be alive.
Officials at the school on Quincy St. said a staffer spotted Jahzir shortly after noon on April 25 as he was leaving the building, but lost sight of the boy once he got outside.
About 20 minutes later, emergency crews responded to the Halsey St. station, where horrified straphangers saw the boy on the tracks.
The boy’s mother, Janee Sheppard, a UPS worker with a parttime job at the Department of Education, said she received a call from someone at the school who said her son was missing. But he was still in the building, the mom was told.
“I told them to look for him. Where else could he be?” said Sheppard, 33. “They said they’ll call me back. A few seconds after I hung up, a police officer called saying they found him on the train tracks and to come get him. Then the Fire Department called, saying he was found on the train tracks.”
The boy was hospitalized and given a psychiatric examination after cops said his trip might have been a suicide bid.
“He said he wanted to kill himself because the school wasn’t listening to him,” Sheppard said. “There was an altercation at the school earlier that day and he was trying to explain what happened, but they weren’t listening to him so he ran out of the building.”
Sheppard said her son left the building once before, but he didn’t get beyond the playground before a staffer brought him back inside. She said Jahzir has had some behavioral problems since he was the victim of a hit-and-run in 2014.
Sheppard said the city’s Administration for Children’s Services got involved, but closed its case. Even so, she said, the school has a responsibility to make sure its children are safe.
The lawsuit is expected to be filed Tuesday.
“Clearly the staff was negligent . . . this should not be happening in any school,” said Sheppard’s attorney, Sanford Rubenstein. Excelsior spokeswoman Mary Ann Sabo said the school doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
“At Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School, the safety and security of our students is always a top priority,” Sabo said.
Since the incident, Sheppard has taken her son out of the charter school and put him into public school.