Mother sues FCPS after her autistic son was found by New Circle Road during school hours

The mother of a 7-year-old autistic student is suing Fayette County Public Schools after her son allegedly left Meadowthorpe Elementary School undetected in November and was found alongside New Circle Road.

The incident happened Nov. 17, 2025, according to the lawsuit filed in Fayette Circuit Court Wednesday by Leslie Weston. After the child left the school, Lexington-Fayette Animal Care and Control officers found the boy on a busy stretch of New Circle Road.

“The number one priority of the Fayette County Public School system must be children’s children’s safety,” the mother’s attorney, Masten Childers III, told the Herald-Leader Thursday. “When failures like this happen we are here to investigate and make sure that those responsible for the failure are held accountable.”

Miranda Scully, Fayette County Public Schools’ spokesperson, said in response Thursday, “as a matter of standard practice, Fayette County Public Schools does not provide statements or discuss legal matters.”

The mother is seeking damages exceeding $75,000 and attorney fees, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the child, identified as “P.W.,” attended Meadowthorpe Elementary in a “moderate to severe” disability classroom. The student had a well-documented and known fixation with a window in the room and had asked multiple times to go outside, signaling he wanted to leave the room.

The lawsuit says the window was not locked, and a teacher was told a window lock would be installed about a month before the incident happened.

The lock was not installed and the window was left open and unattended on the day the child was found along the road, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says the child slipped out the window just after 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2025, entirely unnoticed by any adults in the classroom. For about 20 minutes, he roamed the school yard fully visible on the school’s security cameras.

No one reported him missing from the room, the lawsuit alleges.

The child then found a hole in the fence line that separated the school from New Circle Road, the lawsuit says. He crawled through the hole and began running along the road as traffic passed by. At the time, New Circle Road was under construction, and the shoulder of the road featured construction equipment, signage and concrete barriers.

The lawsuit says animal care and control was in the area on an unrelated call at the same time and found the child.

Animal care and control posted about the incident on social media after it happened.

“This is a reminder that some children — especially those on the autism spectrum, like this young boy — may not recognize danger, and how vital it is to have people like these officers watching out for them,” animal care and control wrote in a Facebook post.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This story was originally published March 12, 2026 at 4:49 PM.