He was safely tucked into bed upstairs. Hours later, he was gone

The parents of a 4-year-old Graham boy thought they’d securely tucked him into bed Wednesday night.

About that.

It turns out little Joseph took the screen off his bedroom window, climbed from his second-story window without incident and was found six blocks away at a stranger’s house, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.

Here’s how that went down, according to the department:

About 8:40 p.m., a Graham resident told deputies there was a young child running southbound through the middle of Meridan Avenue East near 200th Street East — in his pajamas, no less.

They were able to get the boy out of the street and asked him his name, which he said was Joseph. But he didn’t know his last name or his address.

He told them he had climbed out of a window and that he lived far away.

Deputies put him in one of their patrol cars and went through nearby neighborhoods trying to find his parents, but nobody recognized him.

About 11:45 p.m., a pair of parents called 911 to say their 4-year-old son Joseph was missing from his bedroom about six blocks from where the boy had been found. They’d put him to bed several hours before but he was missing from his room when they checked on him later.

It was their son who had opened his second-story bedroom window, popped out the screen and climbed down from to the street.

This story was originally published August 3, 2017 at 8:04 PM with the headline "He was safely tucked into bed upstairs. Hours later, he was gone."