Amber Alert! A Powerful Rescue Strategy for Finding Abducted Kids.
On September 11, 1995, when Jimmy Ryce was abducted at gun point from his school bus stop, there was no Amber Alert mechanism set up to broadcast pictures of him, to alert the public to the child's danger so millions could look for him.
To get everyone looking for Jimmy, Jimmy's parents had to show their love for Jimmy and tremendous fear for his safety.
It is no easy thing for two lawyers to open their hearts when as litigators they have been taught not to show emotion other than to show passion, real or pretended, to make a point. Both knew anything other than real feelings would be spotted immediately as fake.
To keep Jimmy's face in front of everyone, Jimmy's parents granted all requests for interviews and held frequent press conferences. They had to come up with ever-new angles to keep the story alive.
Most of South Florida looked for Jimmy's features in the children they saw during the three months Jimmy was missing, because people related to Jimmy's parents' terrible fear for the well-being of their beloved son, the 9-year-old boy with the big smile and sparkling eyes.
The great thing about Amber Alerts is that the media have agreed, in advance, to interrupt programing to broadcast an abducted child's picture, provided certain criteria are meet. This means the number of people who know a child has been abducted and what the child looks like no longer depends on the parents' ability to express their love for their child and their fear for their child's safety and to get the media to run the story. In order to get help in the search for an abducted child, it is no longer necessary for a parent to be able to emote like Natalie Holloway's mother did when she was looking for her daughter in Aruba.
Florida was the second state (after Texas where Amber Hagerman lived) to have state-wide Amber Alerts, shich plan was launched statewide August 30, 2000. When local law enforcement recommends the activation of an Amber Alert, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers four criteria, which are similar to those in other states, before decided whether to approve or deny the request for activation of an alert:
(1) The child must be 17 years of age or younger;
(2) there must be a clear indication of an abduction (law enforcement officials must have a reasonable belief an abduction has occurred);
(3) the local law enforcement department's investigation must conclude that the child's in danger (some say law enforcement must believe the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death);
(4) there must be a detailed description of the child and/or the abductor and/or the abductor's vehicle to broadcast to the public enough identifying information for them to recognize the child and/or the abductor and/or the car.
(5) the activaton must be recommended by the local law enforcement department having jurisdiction.
As of the end of 2007, there have been over 125 Amber Alert activations in Florida since August 30, 2000, with the child being recovered in 119 cases alive and 2 deceased--Carlie Brucia and Jared McGuire. 4 are still missing: 8-year-old Zachary Bernhardt who disappeared from his home in Clearwater, September 11, 2000; 1-year-old Jarkeius Adside who disappeared from Miami Dade October 18, 2001; 2-year-old Trenton Duckett who disappeared from his home in Leesburg, August 27, 2006; and 28-day-old Bryan Dossantoa who was abducted at knifepoint from his mother December 1, 2006.
In Florida, if a case does not meet the Amber criteria, but the circumstances known indicate that the child is in imminent danger, since March of 2003 a Florida Missing Child Alert can be issued. The difference is that, while the information is sent to the media for them to disseminate, it is up to the media to decide whether they want to interrupt the broadcast.
Since its inception in March of 2003, there have been 107 Missing Child Alerts in Florida. In 5 cases, the child was located deceased--Jeremy Hightower, Ashlyn Pecori, Jessica Lunsford, Sarah Lunde, and Aaron Campbell. Two children for whom Missing Child Alerts were issued have not been found--Jay-Quan Mosley and Jessica Vargas.
Jimmy Ryce's parents, Don and Claudine Ryce, sit on the Florida Amber Review Board. It meets quarterly to ascertain in retrospect whether the decision to issue an Amber Alert was correct. The purpose of this debriefing is to hone the staff's skill in determining whether to activate an Amber Alert.
To illustrate, here are two Florida Amber Alerts which the Florida Amber Review Board decided were appropriately and timely activated.
In Sarasota, Florida, 11-year-old Carlie Brucia was last seen walking home Sunday night from her friend's house where she had spent Saturday night. The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office initially treated Carlie as a runaway. Though she was only 11 years old, she looked older, and she and her mother were going through battles teenager girls and mothers sometimes have. Monday morning a bloodhound was brought in to trace where she went. Starting at the friend's house where she had spent the night, on a scent article from Carlie's home, the dog followed her scent trail behind some stores, revealing that Carlie had taken a diagonal shortcut behind some stores rather than going down the street to the corner and making a 90 degree right turn. The detective following the bloodhound team noticed a motion-activated, security camera behind the car wash and asked the owner if he could view the film to see if Carlie had linked up with anyone after leaving her friend's house. To everyone's surprise, caught on the tape was Carlie's abduction: the burly, white predator clamped his hand on her arm, saying something threatening, maybe, "come with me or I'll break your arm." The film shows the girl being reluctantly pulled away. Knowing now Carlie had been abducted, the Sheriff recommended the activation of a state-wide Amber Alert for Carlie. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement immediately approved it. A national Amber Alert soon followed.
To tell the rest of the story, almost as soon as the film on the car wash camera hit television, the abductor was identified by his landlady. A person who had lent his car to the abductor for the weekend called in, and DNA evidence in the car showed Carlie had been in the car. A few days later Carlie Brucia's body was found.
The Florida Lake Worth Police Department requested an Amber Alert based on the testimony of a teenager who saw the pre-teen snatched from the house where she was staying while her mother worked the night shift as a nurse. Even though the request for activation came in at 2 A.M., the alert went out within hours. The detective working the case asked the teenage boy how many men had taken the girl, and he had the boy show him where the car was parked. When asked to tell in detail what he did to stop the abduction, the boy said he hit one of the boys, stuck his head in the car window, and chased after the car. Alerted by a number of discrepancies in the boy's story, the detective told the patrolmen doing the physical search not to trust that the little girl was taken out the front door and away from the house in the direction the car supposedly went. He directed him to search the abandoned junkyard out beyond the back yard. There a patrolman found the little girl's shorts and panties. When he climbed into a dumpster there and looked into a yellow canister full of cement chips, to his horror, he saw a few little fingers sticking through the debris. Knowing he should not disturb a murder crime scene, he called his supervisor and waited for the crime scene investigators and the medical examiner to arrive. When his supervisor arrived and looked into the canister, he saw the little fingers move and shouted, "she's still alive!" The reason the large cement block above her head had not crushed her was that it was caught on a lip circling the inside of the canister.
Although it turned out the purported eye witness to the girl's kidnapping had, in fact, raped the girl and tried to kill her to eliminate her as a witness, the Florida Amber Review Board agreed that issuance of the Amber Alert was appropriate based on the information available at the time of the activation request. In fact, the activation saved her life, bringing as it did a detective immediately to the scene to question the person reporting the kidnapping. Doctors later said the little girl would have been dead in another 30 minutes if she had not been uncovered when she was.
An Amber Alert may be called even if the person taking the child is a parent if it is believed the child is in imminent danger. The last time the three children of 30-year-old Sophia Garcia were seen was at Richard Yates Public School when she or the 32-year-old father of two of the children--Benito Casanova--picked up her 11-year-old boy, 7-year-old girl, and 6-year-old boy Friday April 18, 2008. Her body was found stuffed in a closet with a plastic bag over her head at the family apartment in Humboldt Park on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, around noon, Monday, April 21st. Her relatives had reported their concerns to the police when they did not hear from her all weekend. Although there was an outstanding protection order barring Casanova from having contact with her, her sisters, or the children, which was granted in February of 2007 and was not to expire until May of 2009, they had apparently been living together again since December of 2007 when they moved into the apartment. It is believed Casanova, her husband or boyfriend, killed Sophia by beating her head in Friday around 2:30. An Amber Alert was issued, even though Casanova had a 3-day jump on taking the children, as he had said repeatedly to her that he would kill her and then himself if she left him. There is a possibility he will return to Mexico with the children who are biracial--part Hispanic and part Caucasian. He is known to be driving a 2002, silver/gray, Dodge Dakota with an Illinois license plate with a known number.
Source: cbs2chicago.com, April 22, 2008; gather.com, April 23, 2008; cbsnews.com, April 24, 2008
An Amber Alert should be called if a child is forciably kidnapped and is in imminent physical danger even if the type of car the child was taken away in is unknown or the child was not carried away in a car. Would law enforcement activate an Amber Alert in this situation which occured in northeast Minneapolis, Minnesota, Thursday, July 10, 2008, around 11 A.M.? 19-year-old Tony McGee, who is the former black boyfriend of a 15-year-old natural blond, came to her home near the intersection of Northeast 18 Avenue and East Polk Street, though she had taken out a restraining order against him a couple of weeks earlier after he beat her up a few times. McGee argued with and cold-cocked her father in the yard of her home, before he drug the screaming teen down her driveway. Because no one saw what car he put her in, an Amber Alert was not issued. The father was beaten so badly he was in Hennepin County Medical Center in serious condition Thursday night. The young girl's danger is obviously so imminent and so great, the public's help in finding where she is quickly is essential. What the victim looks like and, in this case, even what the kidnapper looks like could be broadcast, until the car(s) the kidnapper owns can be identified through the Department of Motor Vehicles or the kidnapper's family and friends or the girl's father. While the media did not have to run the story and show their pictures, as would be the case if an Amber Alert had been issued, the media did run the story. A woman on her way to work at 8 A.M. the next morning recognized him and the now-barefoot girl near East Hennepin Avenue and Buchanan Street N.E. from having seen their pictures on the news. As a result of her reporting their location, the girl was found safe in northeast Minneapolis Friday afternoon, and around 7 P.M. Friday the young man was caught and arrested. Source: CBS Broadcasting, wcco.com, July 10, 2008, facts reported by James Schugel; startribune.com, July 11, 2008.
Amber Alerts, so named in 1996 as a memorial to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, work because the public are quickly provided through the media with enough accurate descriptive information about the abducted child, the abductor, and/or the vehicle to recognize the child, abductor, or car if it happens to pass in front of them during the first few hours the child is missing. 72 percent of children kidnapped who are later found murdered are killed within the first three hours according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The fuse is so short that the child's chance of being recovered alive increases dramatically if millions of eyes are on the lookout for the child.
In 2008, the Associated Press reviewed Amber Alerts in all 50 states and found that what triggers an alert differs in different states: some, like California, extend the alert to cover physically or mentally challenged adults, while others, like Nevada, only use Amber Alerts to locate children; some, like California, allow the alert to be used when one parent involved in a custody battle takes the child, while others, like Nevada, limit its use to children abducted by predators who plan to harm, not nuture, the child. However, the 66 times California has activated Amber Alerts since 2005, compared to Nevada 4 times over the same period, is actually roughly the same rate per capita. Since 2005, Michigan have activated Amber Alerts 100 times, while New Jersey with just a little less population than Michigan have activated Amber Alerts only 4 times during the same period. For complete AParticle by Dorie Turner, Atlanta, Georgia, November 11, 2008, go to google.com; hosted.ap.org, November 20, 2008
To sign up to receive geographically-specific Amber Alert of Missing Child Alert messages on your cell phone, provided it has the ability to receive text messages, text the keyword AMBER followed by a space and your 5-digit ZIP code to short code AMBER (26237). For more information, go to www.wirelessamberalerts.org or in Florida www.missingchildrenalert.com to sign up. For national information on Amber Alerts, go to the U.S. Justice's Amber Alert page at www.amberalert.gov
Some Amber Alert Victories Reported in the MediaAll 50 states have statewide AMBER Alert plans. As of November 2007, 370 Amber Alert recoveries had been made nationwide, many because the perpetrator released the child when he/she heard an alert had been issued, the child, in short, becoming too hot to keep. For more recent statistical information, go to www.ojp.usdoj.gov or www.AMBERALERT.gov Since Amber Alerts were created in 1997, 426 children had been rescued as a result of witnesses spotting the child or car or abductor or the abductor letting the child go because the child was "too hot" to keep.
In Comel County, Texas, the Sheriff's Office issued an Amber Alert Wednesday, November 19, 2008, for 6-year-old Jewel Noel Klein, after her 68-year-old grandmother, who had legal custody of the child, was found badly beaten. It was discovered that, after beating up her mother, the child's 41-year-old mother Tonya Renee Martin had picked up Noel from Rebecca Creek Elementary. By noon Friday, as a result of citizens' reporting spotting the car and as many as 14 officers patroling the areas where the car was spotted, officers zeroed in on a house on Willow Street in East Austin where the mother and daughter had been staying for the last few days. Noel was rescued, and her mother was arrested and charged with aggravated assault of her own mother who is in serious condition at the University Medical Center in Brackenridge. Martin was locked up in the Travis County jail. Austin Police Department Sgt. Jeff Slater said, "It's remarkable how well these people are paying attention to this and calling in and wanting to help." Source: American-Statesman, statesman.com, November 21, 2008, facts reported by Tony Plohetski; news8austin.com, November 21, 2008
In Illinois, an Amber Alert was issued Tuesday night, November 18th, for the children of a murdered woman. Around 1:30 Wednesday morning, a Quincy police officer on patrol spotted a truck matching the description of the vehicle of 30-year-old Brent Vest of Decatur, Illinois who was believed to have murdered his wife and carried her children away. When Vest stopped at a convenience store, the officer confronted him and arrested him, and the children were recovered. Source: KHQA-TV Channel 7, khqa.com, November 20, 2008, facts reported by Alexis Hunt
In Alexandria, Virginia, Sunday morning, October 19, 2008, a 5-year-old boy went shopping with his grandfather: one minute he was next to his grandfather, and the next minute he was gone. Although it took the police over 10 hours to issue the Amber Alert, the moment it was clear the child had been abducted, the alert was issued. Two tips almost immediately came in. One from a bus driver who reported the boy and a man had riden that morning on his bus. Another from the abductor's neighbor who said the man and the boy had come over to his house Sunday afternoon to watch the football game on television. Within three hours of the alert's being issued, the boy was found, the 427th abducted child to be rescued by the activation of an Amber Alert. Source: myfoxdc.com, October 20, 2008, facts reported by Will Thomas
In San Leandro, California, Wednesday, just before noon, a 39-year-old, stay-at-home mom and her 34-year-old husband were at a laundromet at the Big Lots Shopping Center on Lewelling Blvd. and Washington Ave. Her nephew complained about a radio music station being interrupted by an Amber Alert. She had never done so before, but this time she jotted down a description of the car the 33-year-old pregnant, homeless mother had stolen along with her 6 kids 11 years old and younger during a supervised visit at her estranged husband's house around 11 P.M. Tuesday. The 39-year-old mother also told her husband about the Amber Alert description of the car, and he spotted a Mazda matching the description with kids jumping around in the back seat. While her husband boxed in the car with his 1984 BMW, she called the police who arrived within 2 minutes. Three of the children are, like their father, diabetic and have to take medicine 3 times a day. Since they had been without medication for over 24 hours, their father immediately brought medicine for them to where Alamenda County Child Protective Services had taken them. Source: The Mercury News, mercurynews.com, August 6, 2008, facts reported by Gideon Rubin
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, around 4:30 A.M., when her mother left the room, a 17-year-old mother took her 18-month-old son from her mother's house in Independence, at East 24 Street and Fuller Court, which is in Jackson County, Missouri. The grandmother had legal custody of the toddler, and law enforcement was worried enough to issue an Amber Alert, because the mother was believed to be unstable and was believed to be traveling in a car stolen in Callaway County with two other teenagers who had criminal records. At 7:50 A.M. KTXY-FM broadcast the Amber Alert, describing the car as a green Pontiac and giving its license plate number. A few minutes later a woman called the station and said a car matching that description and bearing that plate was right in front of her and that she had already called 911. Police raced to the vicinity of Jefferson City where the woman was and spotted the car. After a brief chase, the car was stopped, and the three occupants were taken into custody. The child was not hurt, but was temporarily placed in the custody of the Missouri Divison of Family Services. The mother was charged with interferring with custody, a Class A misdemeanor, and her bail was set at $50,000. The male driver from Jefferson City was charged with three misdemeanors--driving while his license was revoked, resisting arrest, and second degree property damage. To issue an Amber Alert in Missouri, law enforcement must request the Missouri Highway Patrol to determine if the criteria for issuing an Amber Alert are met: the child abducted must be 17 or younger, in serious danger, and there must be a description of the child and the car. If the child is 18 or older or does not meet all the Amber Alert criteria, but the missing person is believed to be in great danger, an Endangered Persons Alert may be issued. Source: The Kansas City Star, July 31, 2008, facts reported by Mike Rice and Russ Pulley; newstribune.com; News Tribune, July 31, 2008, facts reported by Rosa Ruiz
On Wednesday night, July 2, 2008, Lake Forest, California police or the Orange County Sheriff's Office issued an Amber Alert for Lonnie Ramos who shot his estranged wife and snatched their 9-year-old son, when she came by his house to pick their son up. Ramos is driving a red Porsche and is considered to be armed and dangerous. Ramos' wife is in critical condition. Source: CBS Channel 13, cbs13.com, July 2, 2008
Friday night, June 20th, a 6-year-old boy was playing at the park on 20th Avenue in Anchorage, Alaska when 19-year-old Rano Fetui snatched the boy up and ran on foot out of the park, yelling to the boy's family and friends that he would take good care of the boy. The family convinced the police the boy was in danger because Feturi, who once lived with the boy's family, had been made to leave after he was accused of sexually assaulting another member of the boy's family. The first-ever Amber Alert in Alaska was issued. A tip came in that Feturi with the boy had knocked on the door of a friend in the Richardson Vista apartments on Government Hill. The police arrested Feturi and returned the boy unharmed to his family. Feturi was charged with kidnapping and two counts of sexual assault on another member of the boy's family. Feturi is being held at the jail in lieu of $25,000 bond. Source: NBC KTUU-TV Channel 2, ktuu.com, June 21, 2008
In Everett, Massachusetts, Sunday, June 22nd, around 4 A.M., a 22-year-old mother was sitting in the front seat of the BMW 323i of the 24-year-old father of her 10-month-old baby girl who was in a car seat in the back. When the man began to pommel the mother, she screamed for help. Neighbors called the police, but by the time the police got there, the car and all inside it were gone. About an hour later, the police got a 911 call from the mother's cell phone, with her screaming, "I need the police!" Believing the child and woman could be in real danger, an Amber Alert was issued. Within a few hours, the woman carrying the baby walked into police headquarters. Although it is not known if the man had heard about the Amber Alert before he let them go, a friend's calling the mother to tell her about the alert is what caused her to let the police know they were safe. Source: bostonherald.com, June 23, 2008, facts reported by Laurel J. Sweet
June 15, 2008, Los Angelos, California police issued an Amber Alert for 27-year-old Jose Luis Ortega who shoot his estranged wife as many as twelve times in front of his two boys when an argument started while she was leaving the boys at their father's house in the 10400 block of McBroom Street, around 10:45 Sunday morning. She is in critical condition, hanging on to life, but was conscious and able to tell police her husband had shot her. The father took his 3- and 5-year-old sons with him in his 1998, black Ford Ranger pickup truck and is believed to be heading to Mexico where he has family and friends. This Hispanic man, about 5 foot 6 inches tall, weighing 180 poounds, with black hair and brown eyes, is believed to be armed and dangerous. The truck was found in Lancaster in Sunland; so, the description of the truck has been cancelled. Lack of cooperation by the father's family delayed the issuance of the Amber Alert for two hours.
Source: ABC Channel 30, abclocal.go.com; CBS Channel 2, cbs2.com, June 15, 2008
Tuesday, June 3rd, a 2-year-old girl was taken from her home in Taft, Texas. The Sheriff of San Patricio County suspected the toddler's mother's ex-boyfriend whose child had died a year or so earlier. So, when the Amber Alert was issued, the type of car the ex-boyfriend was driving was known and described in the Amber Alert message. 40-year-old Guadalupe Diaz Jr. was spotted buying gas for his car. In the car with him was the little girl, Diaz' current girlfriend, and Diaz' father, who of whom were both charged with interfering with an arrest. Diaz Jr. was charged with kidnapping. Source: caller.com, June 5, 2008, facts reported by Mike Baird
In the middle of the night, Wednesday, June 4, 2008, a 4-year-old boy was snatched from his Fort Washington, Maryland home, after his parents were tied up by several suspects, who of which was about 5 feet 9 inches tall. An Amber Alert was issued telling people to call 911 if the boy taken away in a gold Cadillac was found. About 12 hours after the boy was taken, a citizen found the boy wandering alone in Takoma Park, 35 minutes by car from his home, and called 911. Why he was taken and whether the boy was let go because once the Amber Alert was issued the boy was too "hot" are some of the unanswered questions police are still trying to figure out. Source: CBS WJZ-TV Channel 13, wjz.com, June 5, 2008, facts reported by Sally Thorner
Around 4 P.M., Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 33-year-old Ida Marybel Torres took her 10-month-old son from the Children's Hospital of Orange County, California, along with her 5- and 11-year-old daughters, while her husband was discussing the baby's condition in another part of the hospital. The husband has had primary custody of the children since December. The mother with her cousin from Kentucky had just come into town the day before. By 10 P.M., an Amber Alert was issued because the baby had pneumonia and needed medical attention. The car was known to have been rented from the airport, and its make, color, and tag number were broadcast as part of the Amber Alert. The mother and children were found in a rest stop in New Mexico by Torrance County deputies, Thursday, around 2 in the afternoon, apparently headed back to Kentucky. Torres will be charged with three counts of child abduction and one count of child endangerment. Source: NBC KOB-TV Channel 4, kob.com; NBC KNBC-TV Channel 4, knbc.com; ocregister.com, May 15, 2008
In El Paso, Texas, Saturday afternoon, April 26, 2008, Stacy Fuller saw a national Amber Alert on television for 15-year-old Morgan Leppert from Putnam County, Florida. When he went out to get some lunch, he saw a girl with the same features panhandling with a young man on the corner: "When I passed by them, it rang a bell; it raised a flag." He called the police, and they arrested Toby Lowry, the young man with Morgan, initially for panhandling. When it was discovered he was driving the pickup truck of 66-year-old James Thomas Steward, who had been found dead in his home in Melrose, Florida, and that the girl was Morgan Leppert, Lowry was also charged with grand theft auto and interference with custody. This is the perfect way an Amber Alert should work. Their high school principal said Lowry dropped out in 2003 at the beginning of nineth grade, and Morgan's parents took her out in March of this year to home school her as she was not doing well in school. However, this time the Amber Alert not only located the missing child but also helped catch two cold-blooded murderers. On Tuesday, Putnam County Sheriff announced that both Leppert and her boy friend Lowry were being charged with first degree murder. It turns out that before the couple left Florida, the girl knocked on Steward's door and told him she wanted to use the phone. When they saw Steward was hard of hearing and physically challenged, Leppert and her boyfriend realized he was an easy target. They beat him with 2 metal rods, stabbed him multiple times with a knife, and suffocated him by pulling a plastic garbage bag over his head. With Steward's truck and money, they drove to Gainsville, Florida and bought new clothes and went to the ocean in Ceder Key. Leppert will be flown back to Florida and placed in a juvenile detention facility. She could face charges as an adult. Lowry will be driven back from Texas to Florida and placed in a Putnam County jail. Source: firstcoast411.com, May 2, 2008, facts reported by Kristin Smith; firstcoastnews.com, May 6, 2008, facts reported by Kristen Smith; cbs47.com, May 9, 2008, facts reported by Leslie Coursey
In Ruskin, south of Tampa, Florida, Saturday morning, April 12, 2008, a one-year-old boy's parents got into an argument which turned physical. The boy's mother left to find a phone to report the domestic disturbance, and when she got back, the baby and his father were gone. As the father had taken the baby about a year ago, and the baby was believed to be in imminent danger, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office requested and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement approved the activation of an Amber Alert. Just before 1 P.M., Saturday, a 911 call came in after a motorist who had seen the Amber Alert sign on I-95 and spotted a car matching that description with a temporary tag with the same or a similar number--a blue/tan Mercury Mountaineer. The car was soon stopped, and 34-year-old Jason Davis was booked into the Palm Beach County jail on outstanding felony warrents of domestic battery and interference with custody. Source: PalmBeachPost.com, April 12 and 13, 2008, facts reported by Hector Florin
A 61-year-old gas station attendant was working the midnight shift at the station on Thorold Stone Road in Niagara Falls. A woman with two children in the back seat pulled up about 2:45 A.M. and asked if she could use an electrical outlet to charge her phone. He noticed right away that she was fidgety. The country music radio station he was listening to broke in with an Amber Alert bulletin for 5- and 8-year-old girls kidnapped from western New York by a 36-year-old woman. He later said, "I was stunned, because they were describing what was right in front of me." He had his co-worker call the police and unsuccessfully tried to stall her. At 3 A.M., the Niagara Regional Police spotted her car on River Road, stopped it, and recovered the girls uninjured who were turned over to the U.S. Customs Border Patrol and reunited with their father by 7 A.M.. The Town of Hamburg P.D. had issued the Alert at 2 A.M. after their father called and said his soon-to-be-X wife had taken their children, was distraught and dangerous, having called him and falsely said she had already killed one of the girls. After she waived extradiction and voluntarily re-entered the U.S., she was charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Source: The Standard in St. Catharines, Canada, January 11, 2008, facts reported by Allison Langley
In Peoria, Arizonia, an Ambert Alert was issued Thursday, February 14, 2008, for a 7-month-old baby girl. The baby was last seen with her mother Wednesday night at 7 when the mother drove off with the child in her white, 2004, Mercedes E320 with Arizonia license plate number 282-PTY. The father did not report the child missing until early Thursday because he hoped the 29-year-old mother would return with the child before he had to call the police. He told the police the mother was depressed and suicidal and might harm the child. The father of the child was already working with social workers to get help for his wife who had been seen abusing the child. A resident of Glendale who was aware of the Amber Alert spotted the vehicle and called the Glendale Police Department, which immediately responded and made a traffic stop of the car near 58th Avenue and Freeway Lane. The child was in the car with her mother unharmed. Source: The Arizonia Republic, February 14, 2008, facts reported by Brent Whiting; azcentral.com
38-year-old Angela Monique Moore kidnapped two toddlers from their Fresno, Texas home to a Houston apartment. Although she was the biologial mother of one boy and the aunt of the other, she did not have custody of her child, and with her history of drug use, she was believed to be a danger to both children. An Amber Alert was issued February 10, 2008, for the kidnapping of the two cousins. A citizen helped Houston P.D. find her car, enabling the police to find the apartment nearby where she had the boys. She was arrested February 11th and indicted March 10, 2008, by a Fort Bend County grand jury for felony kidnapping, which could result in a sentence of from 2 to 20 years. Source: Fort Bend Herald and Texas Coaster, March 17, 2008, facts reported by Stephen Palkot, herald-coaster.com
In Gainesville, Georgia, December 15, 2007, 51-year-old, elementary school teacher Jerry Norman Jones was arrested for molesting three 9-year-old girls and one 8-year-old girl. He was released on $40,000 bond on the condition he stay with his sister in Cumming, Georgia. While his 4-year-old daughter was on a supervised visit at his sister's house, his wife told him he was wanted for violating the conditions of his bond, and early in the morning, February 15th, Jones fled with his daughter in his white 1996 Ford Taurus. U.S. Marshals tracked Jones to a Ramada Inn in Franklin, Tennessee. When they moved in to make the arrest, February 21st, around 8 in the morning, Jones fled with his daughter, running over a fence in the process, with the result being that the marshals pursing him lost him. An Amber Alert issued by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation led to a tip that a similar car was spotted on Interstate 40 west of Franklin. About 10 A.M., a Tennessee Rutherford County deputy saw a black Ford Taurus with patches of white on the roof and front end of the car. As the deputy was checking the tag number, Jones, who had been spray painting his car black, jumped in and sped down Sam Ridley Parkway. On a rural road in Smyrna, Tennessee, about 10:30 in the morning, chased by five patrol cars with sirens blaring, at speeds up to 110 miles per hour, Jones crossed the yellow line, clipped the back of a pickup truck, which sent his Taurus spinning and wrecked his car. Jones escaped without any injuries, and his daughter only had some scratches. He was booked into the Rutherford Count jail in Tenessee on five counts of reckless endangerment and evading arrest in a motor vehicle. The Amber Alert was cancelled February 21st. Source: knoxnews.com, February 21, 2008; www.gainesvilletimes.com, facts repoerted by Stephen Gurr
Amber Alert
