A 3-year-old boy was found wandering a street in Santee Wednesday morning, officials confirmed.
A neighbor spotted the unsupervised toddler just before 8 a.m. wandering the 9100 block of Fanita Rancho Road near Todos Santos Drive and reported the incident to 911, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department (SDSO) said.
Investigators determined the boy had slipped out of his home, undetected, while a parent was home. Two families live at the house, including multiple children.
The SDSO said this was an isolated incident. Officials said a deputy did a thorough investigation and search of the home and determined the home is clean and the children inside are healthy and safe.
The SDSO said the tot's parents told authorities they would "improve child-proofing measures around the home" including adding a latch to the door to keep this from happening again.
The SDSO said the case appears to be an accident and, at this time, was not referred to Child Welfare Services.
NBC 7 spoke with the parents of the toddler who said the incident was a parent's worst nightmare. They hugged their son tight.
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The boy's father said what happened to his family is a good reminder for other parents that children are very smart and can never be watched too closely.
The parents told NBC 7 the toddler was sleeping Wednesday morning in the same bedroom as his mother, who was also asleep. When the child woke up, instead of going to his mother, the tot walked out of the bedroom and then walked out of the house, wandering up the street, the parents said.
That's when a neighbor saw the child and called authorities.
The father, who had been away from the house, said he pulled up to his street to find his son with an SDSO deputy. He said he jumped out of his car and hugged his son, relieved the boy was not hurt in the incident.
"I was pretty much terrified when I got back," said the boy's father. "[I was] still shaking for a couple hours [afterwards]."
The father told NBC 7 he's grateful to his neighbor for calling 911.
"I was glad he was okay. I'm still sitting in here, holding him," he added. "[It's] easy to think about everything that could have happened."
He said he had added a security latch to the door of his home immediately after the incident -- a task he had been putting off but wished he had done before all of this happened.
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