Two five-year-old girls escaped from their kindergarten in Modiin and were found in the mall two k.m. away on Wednesday.
"I got a phone call telling me that my daughter and her friend disappeared," one of the girl's mother told Ynet. "[I] was about to faint. My husband and I ran to the kindergarten with the other girl's parents. I saw parents and the staff whispering to each other, and I thought I was dying. What a nightmare. The teacher and the principal couldn't tell me where my daughter was and how she disappeared in the middle of the day."
The mother went on to describe how the girls packed up their bags and walked out without being seen by any of the staff.
The parents immediately called the police and a search party was established.
A number of police officers reached the mall where they saw the two girls wandering around. To get to the mall from the kindergarten, the girls would have had to cross multiple roads, some of which have traffic lights.
The mother told Ynet that when her daughter saw her, she started to cry. "She knew she did something wrong."
N12 reported that the girls, who somehow had money, walked into a Steimatzky branch and bought toys, and a photo of one of them shows her holding a large milkshake.
In a statement, the Modiin municipality said that "the municipality, in cooperation with the Education Ministry, has begun a thorough investigation to determine how the two girls managed to leave the kindergarten's area and highlight the regulations required to prevent this happening again."