Boy, 5, left at Kohl’s in June will remain in foster care

A 5-year-old boy left at a Wichita department store by his grandmother in June will remain in foster care for now.

Attorneys involved in the boy’s child-in-need-of-care case met with District Judge Jeffrey Syrios on Friday to say that the whereabouts of his father are still unknown and that the boy’s mother is not currently in a position to reintegrate her son into her home, in part because she tested positive for methamphetamine after recently giving birth.

Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Tricia Knoll told the judge a social worker in Texas is not recommending that any children live with the mother at this time, including two others residing in Colorado with their paternal grandparent.

Anita Kemp, a court-appointed attorney representing the mother’s interests in the case, said her client wanted the boy back and was pursuing actions that “in her mind” would bring him home. To date, she has not attended any court hearings concerning her son.

Michael Lazzo, the court-appointed attorney representing the father’s interest in the case, said he has had no contact with his client. Notices of the court hearing were published in newspapers in Sedgwick County and Colorado in an attempt to notify the father.

Attorneys said Friday in court that they’ve been told the mother is or would be undergoing drug treatment in Texas. Right now the goal is to eventually reintegrate the boy into her home if she successfully completes treatment, if her circumstances improve and if a therapist recommends it.

But that plan could change when attorneys meet again in December to review the mother’s progress.

“I think that with this child in particular, mom is going to have a very short window of time,” said Jaime Blackwell, an attorney appointed to represent the boy in the case.

“If she’s going to make changes, she needs to make them now.”

Syrios noted that the boy is “doing well” in foster care. He called the situation with the boy’s birth family “a chaotic mess” with the boy’s mother at its center.

“She’s the common denominator in all of it,” he said.

As has happened at previous court dates in June and July, none of the boy’s relatives attended Friday’s hearing.

His mother, 25, lives in Amarillo, Texas, and his father’s last known address is in Pueblo, Colo.

The grandmother who police say abandoned the boy was arrested Friday.

Other relatives of the boy’s are either dead or not involved in his life.

The boy was left at the Kohl’s store in the 6900 block of West Kellogg on June 16 when police say his 41-year-old paternal grandmother, Kathleen A. Williams, bolted during a shoplifting stop and did not return. The boy was taken into police protective custody then placed in foster care three days later after no one showed up to claim him.

The boy’s mother, Tiffani Picciurro, told The Eagle in interviews in June and July that her son had been living with his paternal grandmother since August 2011 and that she hadn’t seen him in person since. She said she knew who the boy was with and where he was living but never retrieved him because she wanted to keep it “a family, civil matter.”

She has not attended any of her son’s child-in-need-of-care court hearings because, she has said, she doesn’t have a way to get to Kansas from Texas.

This story was originally published September 4, 2015 at 1:57 PM with the headline "Boy, 5, left at Kohl’s in June will remain in foster care."