After a 12-year-old girl from Loris was reported missing earlier this week, police notified the media in hopes that we could get the word out and someone could help find her.
However, there was never an AMBER Alert issued in the girl’s disappearance, which had some people wondering, ‘Why not?’
From the beginning of the investigation, the 12-year-old was suspected of running away from her home, since she had threatened to do so the day before. The AMBER Alert system was created by the U.S. Dept. of Justice to help find children who were abducted by someone, not those who ran away.
The government has a set of guidelines in place for when an alert should be issued. Those guidelines, in a nutshell, are:
- The person must be 17 years old or younger
- Police must believe the child was taken by someone other than their non-custodial parent
- Police must believe the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death
- There is enough description of the child available so the public could help identify him or her
Lt. Keith Strickland with the Horry County Police Department said each law enforcement agency has its own set of guidelines for whether to issue an AMBER Alert. However, they all fall in line with the national guidelines.
Once local police assess a missing person situation, they decide if it is an AMBER Alert case. If they think it is, they notify the SC Law Enforcement Division. SLED then reviews the case and decides whether to issue the alert. The actual AMBER Alert in South Carolina is issued by SLED.
Strickland stressed that each case is handled on a case-by-case basis. To read more about the guidelines in place for deciding whether an AMBER Alert will be issued, click here.
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