Taking a puff on her first cigarette Sunday, the words just pour out, like an emotional dam has opened.

"I don't even know why I am talking about it," she said. "I guess it's because I am just so relieved its over and he is safe."

Sunday morning, her son, Jacob, pulled a chair over to the front door of their first-floor apartment, pulled back the slide bolt and wandered out alone.

Two hours later, after meandering across several major roads, Jacob arrived at one of his favorite places, Dunkin' Donuts in the Tri-town Plaza on Derby Avenue adjacent to Route 8 in Seymour.

When Torres finally got to him, he was lying in an ambulance unhurt.

"He looked at me and said, 'Hi, mom.' I just sat down there bawling."

Torres, a young-looking 24-year-old with short red hair, sat cross-legged on a green futon in the living room of her May Street apartment. She would hide her cigarette behind one of the futon's arms as her two children, Jacob and 3-year-old Amber, kept popping out of their bedrooms for more juice or just to see what was going on. Each time she would patiently get what they wanted and escort them back to their rooms.

"They really can be a handful," she admitted, plopping back onto the futon.

Her husband, Eliezer, 27, recently got a job working nights at a local supermarket, and Torres said she no longer has a relationship with her family.

She said because of Jacob's autism she can't just tell him no. "You have to talk to him in a different way or he gets upset," she explained.

But Sunday morning Torres was half-asleep, and Jacob was demanding to use the computer. "If I let him he would spend all day on the computer, so I just told him no."

She said she got up and went into the bathroom to take a shower. "Actually, I didn't even take a shower I just went in and shaved my legs," she corrected herself.

When she got out, Jacob was gone.

"I honestly didn't think much of it at first because he often goes upstairs because they [the tenants there] have kittens, but I looked there and he wasn't there."

She said she woke up her husband and together they searched their small, three-room apartment and the fenced dirt yard.

"I thought maybe he was playing hide and seek; he had just started learning how to play it," she said.

She panicked when she realized Jacob had wandered out of the yard. "I was hysterical. All I kept thinking about was the highway and I called 911."

She said a short time later a police officer came to her door. "He kept asking me questions about Jacob and then finally told me they had found him."

Torres said she followed the police officer in her car to the Dunkin' Donuts, where there was an ambulance parked outside. "I looked inside and there was Jacob strapped into a bed, but they told me they were just taking him to [Griffin] hospital as a precaution."

While Torres said the police had been friendly to her and her husband, they charged the couple with risk of injury to a minor.

"A 5-year-old autistic boy should have close monitoring," Ansonia Sgt. Jeffrey Dempsey said later.

The boy could not speak, Dempsey said, creating a problem for police in determining where he belonged. When the Torres' call came in reporting their son was lost, police made the connection, Dempsey said.

The Torres' posted $1,000 bond and are to appear in Derby Superior Court this morning.

"I don't think I'm a bad mother," she said. "I just do the best I can, but sometimes things just get out of hand."

Torres said shortly after they moved into the apartment, both her son and daughter left the house.

"I had just laid down for a few minutes and when I woke up the front door was open.

She said they found her daughter, who was wearing only a diaper, and her son, who was in a T-shirt and underwear, at a nearby elementary school.

After that she said they installed a new front door with a slide lock and put a lock on her daughter's bedroom door.

"I figured she was the instigator [and] that I didn't have to worry about Jacob. I guess he just got mad at me because I said no to him."

Staff writer Steven Scarpa and correspondent John Mongillo Jr. contributed to this report.