Imagine hearing your doorbell ring one night, and answering the door only to find a two-year-old boy on your doorstep.
It sounds odd, but that's just what one woman from a suburb of Houston, Texas experienced this week.
Thankfully, surveillance footage captured the woman who abandoned the boy at a stranger's doorstep, but police are still unraveling why he was left there.
"It was very alarming and very disturbing and my heart was hurting for that child."
In footage from the homeowner's doorbell camera, a woman in a white car can be seen pulling up to the driveway just after 8 p.m. Wednesday night.
In just 23 seconds, the woman pulls the boy and his bags out of her car, drags them up the home's front steps, rings the doorbell, and runs back to her car.
Police say the homeowner arrived at her door just seven seconds later, but by then the woman was already gone.
But the homeowner had no idea who the little boy was, or what he was doing in front of her home.
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department released the shocking footage to the public, hoping someone could identify the woman in the video.
"I was gut-wrenched," Lieutenant Scott Spencer said about watching the video. "It was very alarming and very disturbing and my heart was hurting for that child."
Thankfully, police said the boy was "uninjured and appears to be in good health."
"A big misunderstanding."
The mystery of the little boy's appearance was solved Thursday morning, when the homeowner's next door neighbor, Willie Simmons, left his house and found reporters camped out on his street.
After watching the video, Simmons immediately recognized the boy as his son, Royal, and revealed that the woman in the video was a friend of his wife.
Simmons later told police his wife had arranged for her friend to drop Royal off at his home Wednesday afternoon.
When she didn't show up, Simmons said he assumed plans had changed, and left his house for the night.
Obviously, the friend had dropped Royal off at the wrong house, but police made it clear she was not off the hook.
"The female in the video then left the location without verifying anyone was home or who she was releasing the child to," Spencer said, "which placed the child in great danger."
Local news reports say that Royal has since been released back to his mother, after an emergency meeting with the Texas Department of Family & Protective Services.
Meanwhile, police say they are still investigating the woman who dropped Royal off at the wrong home.
"What if my neighbor wasn't there?" Simmons asked. "Then my son would have been roaming up and down the street."
"That was very irresponsible. The lady who dropped my son off, she needs to be held accountable."
Royal's mother would only call the case "a big misunderstanding."