JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 On Wednesday afternoon, Ashley Hicks told us she drove to the parent pick-up of the IDEA River Bluff school in Jacksonville\u2019s Arlington neighborhood, early, to get her kids from school.<\/p>\n
When she got there, Hicks said her husband called and told her their 7-year-old and 6-year-old sons were already home. Hicks said she had no notice they had left school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018you don\u2019t know that my kids left the premises.\u2019 They said, \u2018no,\u2019\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n
Sometime before school let out around 3:30 PM, Hicks said her kids walked out of their classrooms without any excuse, left the building without being stopped, and walked across four lanes of traffic on University Boulevard to get home to their apartment across the road.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Hicks said she confronted school staff after the call from her husband.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said that my 6-year-old son went to his older brother\u2019s classroom, he\u2019s seven, and told him, \u2018hey, it\u2019s time for us to go.\u2019 No adult called me. No one said anything. No one reported to me stating that my kids were even gone,\u201d Hicks told us.<\/p>\n Aside from wondering how her young kids were able to walk themselves out of their school building before class let out, Hicks said she\u2019s mainly been stressed thinking that her sons must have walked across the road, alone, to get home. <\/p>\n The Florida Department of Transportation\u2019s data from 2024<\/a> shows that at least 9,100 cars drive that particular stretch of University Boulevard every day. After finding out her kids had apparently walked home, Hicks\u2019 mind immediately went to her kids\u2019 safety.<\/p>\n \u201cMy kids could have been hit by a car,\u201d Hicks said, \u201cthat\u2019s devastating for me to just arrive at the school, to pick up my kids, just for my kids not to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n At the start of the month, Action News Jax reported when one person was killed and two others were hurt<\/a> after a hit-and-run on University Boulevard. Back in September, we told you when the Florida Highway Patrol found a Pensacola man dead<\/a> on the road after he\u2019d reportedly been hit by multiple cars.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Hicks is deciding to transfer her kids to another school, mainly because she claims the current school staff hasn\u2019t helped her find ways to prevent this from happening again.<\/p>\n \u201cMy child could have been killed on their watch. So I\u2019m very upset. Very upset,\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n Action News Jax reached out to the IDEA school for a response to Hicks\u2019 claims. In a statement, the school said this:<\/p>\n \u201cIDEA River Bluff is investigating an incident involving two siblings released from campus prior to dismissal and later found safe. The incident is under investigation. We are also in direct communication with the family. The safety of our students remains our highest priority.\u201d <\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 On Wednesday afternoon, Ashley Hicks told us she drove to the parent pick-up of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,28,348,64082,116,351,118,64083,117,64084,349,350,64085,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-129966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-cbs47","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-fox30","12":"tag-idea-river-bluff-school","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-fl","15":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","16":"tag-jacksonville-kids-leave-school","17":"tag-jacksonville-news","18":"tag-kids-leave-school","19":"tag-northeast-florida","20":"tag-southeast-georgia","21":"tag-unsupervised-kids-jacksonville","22":"tag-wfox","23":"tag-wjax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}