Ameleah Kegly's mother wasn't at her school bus stop on Monday afternoon like normal.

The five-year-old walked home and let herself into her Ohio home but three hours later, 31-year-old Christina Hunter still hadn't arrived.

At about 7pm when she was tired of waiting in the dark, the plucky kindergartener decided to take matters into her own hands.

She found the keys to her mother's SUV and got behind the wheel to go out searching. She worked out how to turn the headlights and put the key in the ignition, but couldn't start it.

The car rolled down the driveway into her neighbour's yard, where Ameleah decided she needed some help and called emergency services.

"Um, my mom’s car backed out on accident and I need the police to pull my mom’s car back in," she told the operator.

"The car is staying on running now you got to get here quick, my mom is going to be pissed at me."

"Where is your mom at? Is she in the car," the dispatcher asked.

"Umm, no, I don’t know where she is at and I’m lost," Ameleah said. "She gone and I miss her so much."

A police officer Ryan Grimshaw arrived at the home to find Ameleah unharmed, but scared.

"I just found a little girl standing in the doorway by herself on the phone," he told the Mansfield News Journal.

"She was scared, but she opened up pretty quickly. She said she came home from school and no one was there. 

She said she had been playing with her two cats and that she was hungry, so I made her some pizza rolls and gave her a juice box. She was pretty happy about that."

It turns out Ameleah's mother had been taking to hospital earlier in the day in an ambulance. Although she alleges she told Ameleah's father to pick the girl up from school, he denies receiving the message.

Although no charges have been laid, the Department of Children Services is looking into the incident.