Tulsa Police locate missing 3-year-old

Tulsa Police just located a missing 3-year-old boy who hadn't been seen since the Fourth of July.

Police have turned the boy over to DHS and say there have been no arrests made right now.

Investigators say the boy was with his mother when she went to catholic Charities on July 1, and people there made a report to DHS the next day, July 2.

Tulsa Police say they were contacted by DHS last Friday, July 18.

Investigators say the boy's mother went to Catholic Charities on July 1st, saying she and her three-year-old son were homeless.

“We provided a hotel room actually for a night with the idea that she would come back the next day, and we would do case management for her to find a better situation,” said Deacon Kevin Sartorius, CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma. “It was during that interview that our case manager found some clues that maybe that the child was in need of further scrutiny by DHS, so we made a report to Child Protective Services.”

Police say three days later, on the Fourth of July, the mother paid another homeless woman $50 to take the little boy. That woman took him to her mother’s house for a party.

That woman's mother posted on social media, asking if anyone knew the boy.

A woman claiming to know the boy's father reached out, and later, a man picked up the boy at the QuikTrip near Pine and Peoria.

That was the last time anyone had seen the boy.

Catholic Charities says their team is trained to report cases like this quickly, but sometimes, the system takes time to respond.

“We see these cases not on a regular basis but far too often and it happens, I would say, at least monthly, and in that what we find is that it takes time for DHS to do their work, even to engage, and often times then it’s not going to be that we make a phone call and immediately someone springs into action, but we will make a phone call and it may be even days or even weeks before there is action taken,” said Sartorius.

Tulsa Police say they didn't issue an Amber Alert because it doesn't meet the requirements of the state law.