“She’s known for that.  I mean, she gets excited when she wants to go out,” the girl’s mother, who did not want to be identified, told CTV News Toronto Thursday afternoon.
Toronto police received a call to reports of a young woman missing from her home around 1:30 a.m. Thursday.
The girl and her younger sister reportedly unlocked the door and then the four-year-old left the house.
“I have a little baby (the sister)… he opened a safety lock on the handle and opened it.  And I guess my daughter who has autism saw that the handle was closed and she reached over to move a dining room chair to the back door and reach up and pull the two sliding locks,” the mother said.
The girl was missing for about 20 minutes before her mother called the police.
“I couldn’t concentrate.  I couldn’t process it.  Everything was going through my mind because I say he “doesn’t know what he’s doing”.  He has no idea what he did.’  I had no idea where he could go,” said the mother.
Shortly after police responded, they received a call from the TTC that the child was found wandering on the train tracks at the Warden subway station, located at Warden and St.  Clair.
The family live a short walk from the station and the mother believes her daughter climbed over their backyard fence onto a path that led to the tracks.
TTC spokesman Stuart Green said the child was spotted at track level by a train operator guiding a train toward her.
“Leaving from Warden station to Victoria Park station, it’s an open area. So for people who aren’t familiar, it’s just wide open there. There’s a lot of fencing along the side, there’s signage and all sorts of things advising you to stay off the track , but it’s exposed in the open,” Green told CP24 Thursday morning.
The operator stopped the train and called crossing control to cut power to the track level.
Green said this was necessary as the child was walking along planks over the power rail, which carried 600 volts.
Once the power went out, the operator picked up the child and brought him onto the train, Green said.
The train then reversed back to Warden Station, where her mother and the police were waiting.
The child was not injured and is in good health, police said.
The TTC said the train was out of service at the time of the incident and no passengers were on board.

		Huge shout out to the #TTC crew on Line 2 who spotted a kid walking along the boards over the feeder rail (with 600 volts running through it) near Warden Stn.  Around 130 AM  The child was safely recovered and turned over to emergency responders.  Great work!!
	— TTC Media Relations (@TTCNewsroom) August 11, 2022
No charges have been filed, but police said safety advice was given to parents.
The mother said this isn’t the first time her daughter has unlocked the doors and left the house, prompting the family to add a total of seven locks to their doors.
“I have to keep her tied around my waist.  I can’t do anything until I get out of here.  I’m looking to move, yes, because I don’t think it’s safe.  And I don’t like the idea that if he gets lost again or tries to escape again, he’s in the woods or he might end up right here near the train,” he said.
Green said it’s unclear how the child got onto the tracks, which are surrounded by fencing at the site.
“We’ve checked the CCTV. We checked the fencing last night in the immediate area. We didn’t see any gaps in the fence. We couldn’t see anything on the video to suggest how the child gained access. But we’re looking into that further today,” said Green.
Green added that the train operator’s “heroic” efforts prevented a tragedy.
“They (the conductor) were probably a little shaken up last night when that happened. But you know, they really did a heroic job. I mean, it might sound like a simple thing to stop a subway train and bring a kid off the tracks. The train. There’s a lot of risk in that,” Green said.
Just two weeks ago, a four-year-old girl in Mississauga was killed after she walked onto train tracks and was struck by a GO train.  Neighbors in that case said they had previously complained about a lack of barriers preventing pedestrians from entering the track area.