Mum's fury after daughter goes missing from Evanton nursery
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A HORRIFIED mum has spoken of her terror after her three-year-old escaped from a nursery and wandered half-a-mile to her granny’s house.
Brooke Masterton crossed two busy roads and a bridge after making a break from the nursery playground at Kiltearn Primary School in Evanton.
The tot was found with a bleeding knee and crying out for her mother.
Mum Nicole Masterton (25) said: “I couldn’t believe it when I found out.
“I was shaking with anger. Brooke could have been killed or hit by a car or abducted.
“There’s no security and now I’m being told by the council they won’t be putting in cameras or high fencing or anything.”
Miss Masterton dropped Brooke off at nursery at 9am as usual and then went shopping.
Panic struck when she went to her parents’ house just before 1pm and spotted the youngster’s pants and tights lying in the garden.
She said: “They were soaking wet. She must’ve wet herself. My head started spinning. Where was she? I was thinking ‘Oh my God, someone’s got her’.”
She dashed to the nursery and rushed in asking: “Where’s Brooke?”
She said staff explained Brooke had gone missing from the play area.
A woman, living next door to her grandmother on Thomas Maciver Street, saw her in the garden crying and with no-one home she took her back to nursery.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” said Miss Masterton. “Brooke was upset and crying, and she kept saying ‘mummy I couldn’t find you’.
“Who in their right mind would allow a child to get out of their sight in a nursery playground? Brooke had to cross two main roads and a bridge across a river to get up to my mother’s. She might not be here today. We walk that road to nursery and she’s forever trying to climb up the bars of that bridge.
“The worst part is no-one from the school even phoned me to tell me she was missing.”
She called the police who concluded after talks with staff that it was a council matter.
She pulled the child out of nursery and won’t put her back until high fencing and cameras go up. The young mum broke her silence this week because the council told her security at the centre was appropriate.
She is launching a petition.
“I’ll put on bingo nights or whatever it takes the get the money together for better fencing and cameras,” she said.
“It must be the only school in Scotland that’s got no proper security.”
Parent council secretary Annelie Graham said security was “a concern”.
She said: “The front entrance to the school was going to be completely overhauled by the council, and that was promised in November and it was going to be done by Easter-time.
“Then we were told it was ‘still to be confirmed’ but if it has been shelved then we are going to make an official complaint. It’s something that does need to be sorted and it is a concern.”
A council spokeswoman was unable to say whether anyone had been disciplined over the matter because the authority “does not comment on personnel matters”.
She said security arrangements in council properties and schools are confidential.
She explained schools must comply with fire regulations “to allow safe and speedy egress in the event of an emergency”, therefore appropriate doors must be kept unlocked from the inside, although locked from the outside, to stop inappropriate access to the school.
She added: “The school has reviewed its policies and procedures to help ensure that children are always kept safe. The family has been contacted by education management.”
A spokesperson for the Care Inspectorate said staff had reported the incident and it had “followed this up with the service and will continue to work closely with them to ensure children are kept safe at all times”.
