Samantha Garcia was at a friend’s house to watch the Daytona 500 Sunday afternoon when she stepped outside to find out what was causing a commotion in the front yard of his house in southwest Wichita.

That’s when she first saw the 2-year-old boy, crying, frightened and bleeding heavily from his nose and lip.

“He was scared,” Garcia said. “I’ve never seen a child’s lip that swollen.”

While he shied away from her male friend in the front yard of the house in the 2000 block of West Rita, northeast of Pawnee and Meridian, “as soon as I came up, he put his arms up and climbed right up into my arms, no problem,” Garcia said.

He had road rash on his arm and two deep cuts on his face, she said.

Wichita police on Monday said the boy was riding in the back seat of his mother’s car when he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the back door and fell out. His 22-year-old mother didn’t notice he was gone until she arrived at her home in the 2000 block of South Hiram more than 1 1/2 miles away.

She then retraced her steps, and found him at the house on Rita.

The mother claimed she panicked when she got home and took out the child safety seat, and wanted to leave with her child immediately, Garcia said.

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