Family plans lawsuit after 6-year-old wanders from Fallstaff Elementary

A 6-year-old’s walk from Fallstaff Elementary to the Five Below at Reisterstown Road Plaza has become a looming lawsuit and a hard question for Baltimore City Public Schools: how did Liam Livingston leave school unsupervised and make it to a busy shopping center in northwest Baltimore?

On Wednesday, May 6, Liam’s family formally notified Baltimore officials that it intends to sue over the May 2025 incident. The notice came after a press conference outside the Five Below where the child was eventually found, and it names both the city and the school system as targets of the legal action. The family says the case is about more than one frightened afternoon. It is about a child who should have been accounted for and was not.

Belinda Curry said Liam was supposed to go to an after-school program, but he did not stay with that plan and instead left school grounds. By her account, she did not learn he was missing until around 3 p.m., when the principal called. She later said she received the call around 3:20 to 3:25 p.m., after school staff had already found him inside the store and brought him back. The family’s attorney, Thiru Vignarajah, has framed the episode as a serious failure of supervision, arguing that a 6-year-old should not have been able to get away from school and reach Reisterstown Road Plaza on his own.

Fallstaff Elementary/Middle School sits at 3801 Fallstaff Road in northwest Baltimore and serves pre-K through 8. The district profile lists an opening bell of 7:30 a.m. and a closing bell of 2:10 p.m., with enrollment around 524 students and principal Sedrick Smith leading the school. Those details matter because the case puts the focus on what happened after dismissal, how a young child was tracked, and where the system broke down between the classroom door and the call home.

Maryland Family Law section 5-801 says a person caring for a child under 8 may not allow that child to be locked or confined in a building while the caregiver is absent unless a reliable person at least 13 remains with the child. Baltimore City Public Schools says its board policies and regulations are aligned with state law, which means the dispute is now as much about institutional responsibility as it is about a family’s grief and anger.

The family says Liam was later moved to a different school. The city was not commenting because of active litigation. What remains unresolved is the central safety failure: a 6-year-old left Fallstaff, crossed into a major commercial corridor, and reached Reisterstown Road Plaza before the school’s safeguards and notification system caught up.