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Maze said the parents didn’t know the boy was missing and drugs are being considered a factor.

“How do you not know you are missing a child? That is the question we are going to continue to ask. With further investigation and interviewing of the parents, we hope to answer that question today,” said Maze.

Police said reports are that the four-year-old boy had been at the park earlier in the day with his siblings, then they left the park, leaving him behind.

During the investigation, it was determined conditions inside the home where the boy lives with his two parents and four siblings, ranging from a few months old to 15 years old, weren’t “suitable for children to live in,” said Maze.

All of the children are now in the care of social services.

Maze said investigators learned it was not uncommon for the children to spend the day at the park together, located three blocks away from the boy’s home.

Even then, Maze said, young children can become easily confused and lose their way, even when they are close to home.

“It isn’t uncommon for children from the ages of five downwards to not know where they are or where home is,” said Maze. “We do the best that we can to try to locate, at times we’ve walked with children through neighbourhoods looking for their homes. It’s one of those things, they don’t necessarily know where their house is or what their house looks like, they just know how to get from point A to point B, and then they get confused.”

Maze said parents can work on coaching their children to recite their first and last name and, if possible, a phone number that they can give to a trusted adult should they get lost.

The parents, a 43-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman, are each charged with five counts of causing a child to be in need of intervention and one count of causing a child to be “drug endangered.”

The names of the parents are not being released to protect the identity of the children.

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