TEXAS CITY — A 6-year-old elementary school student was missing for more than five hours Monday after he was sent home with a neighbor instead of a legal guardian when classes were dismissed early.

The boy was found safe, but his mother is demanding answers.

After a power outage at Simms Elementary School, school officials sent students home early. Parents were supposed to be called to make arrangements for their children to be picked up.

Tonya Moses said she never received a call at home or on her mobile phone. She said she dropped her son, Johnny “J.J.” Lewis, off about 7:30 a.m. and that normally he would ride the bus home after school.

Moses said she didn’t hear about the power outage until she was told by a relative.

“It wasn’t until my cousin called me about 10:30 (a.m.) saying he was picking up his kids — and he asked me where J.J. was,” Moses said. “I said he was at the school, and my cousin said no he wasn’t.”

When Moses arrived at the campus, all school district officials could tell her was that “he got into a car with a big black man,” Moses said.

“They didn’t know what type of car he was in, who the man was, nothing.

“For five hours, no one knew where my son was.”

That prompted a call to the Texas City Police Department, which launched an investigation but did not issue an Amber Alert.

The boy wasn’t with a man but with the mother of his next-door neighbor. Moses said the woman drove the two boys to Houston, where she had to run an errand, but never contacted her to say that J.J. was with her.

While the woman is her neighbor, Moses said she knows only the woman’s first name and had never authorized her to pick up Moses’ son from school.

“I feel like anybody could just come up and just take a kid like that. How can that be?” Mose said. “My God, I prayed because I thought I wasn’t going to see him again.”

The boy was found about 3 p.m.

La Marque school administrators admitted that Simms officials failed to follow protocol.

“Proper emergency procedures were not followed pertaining to the release of students,” district spokeswoman Denise McLean said. “The district is working with Simms Elementary staff to ensure that all procedures are followed during a crisis.”