DENVER — Questions remain after two boys walked away from the Tennyson Center for Children in Denver Monday night.
The call no parent wants to get is the exact one Tajanae Young picked up Monday afternoon.
"I got the call around like 2:50," Young said.
It was a call to inform her that her 10-year-old son had been reported missing.
"At first, I'm just like, 'Alright, we're gonna find him,'" she said.
He'd been a student at the Tennyson Center for Children for just four days, according to Young.
After she'd learned he'd been reported missing from the treatment center, Young says she and others drove to the treatment center area to help search for her son.
"It was just like, super stressful, and then once it started getting darker, I felt like the darker it got, the darker my thoughts got about where he was," she told Denver7.
Denver7 contacted the Tennyson Center for Children for information on Monday afternoon's situation. The treatment center provided the following statement:
On April 7, 2025, two children in our care were briefly unaccounted for following school dismissal. We are relieved and grateful to share that both children were safely located and reunited with their families later that evening.
The safety and well-being of the children we serve are our top priority. We are actively reviewing this incident to ensure all appropriate protocols were followed and will be strengthened if needed. We are in close communication with all necessary parties and remain committed to transparency, accountability, and the trust our community places in us.
Ieyla Devereaux, an aunt of one of the boys, told Denver7 that the center uses Uber to take children home. According to the Devereaux, the boys allegedly threw something at the Uber vehicle, and the driver left. The two boys then walked away.
Denver7 also asked the treatment center about the circumstances surrounding the transportation of the two 10-year-old boys who were reported missing Monday afternoon. Below is the statement the center provided.
School Districts contract with independent student transportation companies. These companies can include but are not limited to, EverDriven, Noah Cares and Hop Skip Drive. These companies are designed to support children and adolescents. Tennyson Center does not arrange transportation, nor do the students utilize services such as Uber or Lyft for transportation.
In an update posted to social media at 10:50 p.m. Monday, the Denver Police Department said the two boys had been found safe.
Young said she felt a huge relief when she got the call but still had questions about what happened while her son was "missing" and what led to that moment.
"I felt extreme relief, but at the same time, I was concerned because how did he get to Arvada? That's a long way away from where we are, and I've never even been to Arvada," she said.
It's not the first time the Tennyson Center for Children has made headlines.
Back in 2020, 12-year-old Timothy Montoya was hit and killed by a vehicle after running away from the treatment center.
The Timothy Montoya Task Force was created years later in an effort to understand why youth from out-of-home placements, like foster care or residential child care facilities, run away.
Stephanie Villafuerte, Colorado's Child Protection Ombudsman, said the task force's goal was to ask questions that have never been asked before in Colorado.
In October 2024, the task force issued a report with its findings.
"The findings of the task force were that there are no statewide protocols to address when children run from out-of-home placement," she said.
In its report, the task force broke recommendations into three different components, according to Villafuerte.
"The first was prevention. How do we prevent kids from running in the first place, right?" she said.
"The second piece was an intervention. In other words, what should we do when a child leaves the premises?" Villafuerte added. "What should we physically do to go look for them? What do we do?"
Finally, "the third piece, what we call post-care," she said. That is, when children remove or come back, what sort of care are we giving them? Are we giving them physical examinations? Are we asking them about any potential traumas they've suffered as victims of crime, and how are we treating those circumstances?"
Villafuerte added that Senate Bill 25-151 was formed in response to the report. "It's called 'Measures to Prevent Youth from Running Away,' Villafuerte said. "This bill does three things."
"First, it requires that when a parent admits their child into a residential treatment facility, that that parent and that child are given notification of what the facilities policies are when a child runs," she said.
"The second piece now requires facilities to notify the parent or custodian of a child's runaway within 4 hours," Villafuerte added. "The third thing that the bill does is that it requires there to be an inventory of residential care facilities and infrastructure. In other words, do people use fences? Are there silent alarms, right?
What notification systems may various facilities have that can prevent a child or at least deter them from running?"
Villafuerte clarified that should the bill be signed into law, these procedures and requirements would only apply to cases where children are listed as runaways from these facilities.
For Young, she says she was over the moon when she got the news her son had been found, but questions remain.
"I was ecstatic that we found him but still anxious, like what did he go through?" she said.
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