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~AWARDS~
Best New Book of The Year 2007
Writer of the Year, 2000 & 2007
Honorable Mention Awkward
Romance Contest May 2006
All Time Best Award
Fanstory.com 2006
Finalist in Chicken Soup
Contest 2005
Distinguished Achievement
Award, 2005
2nd Place Photo Say More
Contest 2005
Top Story in Obadiah Contest 2002
2 Top Stories in Obadiah
Contest 2003
Diploma from Guideposts for
Teens, 2002
Merit Certificate from
Writer's Digest, 2000 & 2001
~~~~~~~~~~
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Parents of Runaways Fend for Themselves
Police Put Off Searching in Most Cases
article originally posted @:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16540-2005Jan17.html
By Avis Thomas-Lester
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 18, 2005; Page B02
It was the scariest call Tonya Wingfield had ever received.
Her daughter Ashleigh, 14, had disappeared shortly after Wingfield
dropped her off at her private school the morning of Jan. 10, the headmaster
told her. The girl had last been seen talking to a 16-year-old boy from
another school. Apparently they left together.
For more than 24 hours, Wingfield searched for her daughter. She called
Ashleigh's cell phone but got no answer. She called the cell phone carrier and
found that the phone had been used several times to call the boy's friends. She
called 911 but was told that police wouldn't search for Ashleigh because it
appeared that she had left school voluntarily.
So Wingfield called in her own network: civic leaders, school activists,
police officers she had met through years of involvement in her Prince George's
County community. Ultimately, it was one of her contacts who found Ashleigh in
the District on Tuesday morning.
Wingfield's experience underscores the difficulty that parents often face
when they seek help from law enforcement finding a child who might have run
away. Unlike child abduction cases, where police mobilize immediately, runaway
cases draw less effort, authorities said.
The U.S. Justice Department estimates that 800,000 children are reported
missing to police agencies each year -- about 2,200 each day. Ben Ermini of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington said that the
majority of the cases reported to his agency involve runaways. Most return home
within 24 to 48 hours, Ermini said, leading law enforcement officials to eschew
searches that are costly and take officers away from other tasks.
Ermini said federal legislation was passed 15 years ago directing police
to take reports immediately on any missing children under age 18, including
runaways. Under the law, that information must be entered into the National
Crime Information Center, a computerized database of victims and criminals
maintained by the FBI.
That doesn't mean they start to search immediately. Retta Williams Jeffers
had to mobilize her own search when her 11-year-old son went missing in
Southeast Washington in October 1994. D.C. police refused to initiate a search
for 72 hours, saying the boy probably had run away. So she recruited neighbors,
including residents of a nearby halfway house, to look for him. The halfway
house residents found him 2 1/2 days after he disappeared, less than 100 yards
from where he had been snatched by convicted child molester Contee Stevenson.
"They can't assume that every child who disappears ran away just because
someone didn't see them get abducted," Jeffers said in an interview last week.
Even if her daughter left voluntarily, Wingfield said, that didn't mean
she was safe.
"You don't know who she is going to encounter," said Wingfield, who owns a
computer consulting company in Upper Marlboro. "They may have made the choice to
go on their own, but acting on that choice could mean that they come upon a
murderer or a molester or someone else who could victimize them."
When she discovered that her daughter was not at Lanham Christian School,
Wingfield immediately conducted a search of the area around the school and
canvassed the neighborhood trying to find her.
Prince George's police did not come to her home to take a report until she
contacted a friend on the police force who called a supervisor, she said. At
that point, officers interviewed her and visited the home of the boy with whom
Ashleigh had last been seen. The boy said he didn't know where she was.
Wingfield then mobilized friends to search for her daughter. Phil Lee, a
community activist and former police officer, helped coordinate with law
enforcement. Wingfield's mother and nephew called acquaintances. Friends rode
through neighborhoods. An e-mail was sent to hundreds of people. Fliers were
posted and disseminated to businesses.
Lt. Edward Walters, investigative commander of the police district
involved in Ashleigh's case, said more than half of the 650 missing person cases
reported to his station last year involved young runaways. While police officers
are required to take a report and assess every missing child case, only the
children who are believed to be in danger or are under age 13 or mentally or
physically disabled are automatically classified as "critical missing persons."
Police said the sheer numbers limit their ability to search for suspected
runaways.
"It would be very difficult to search for all of those kids," Walters
said.
Ashleigh Wingfield knew her mother was trying to reach her: The cell phone
kept ringing. The boy she left school with urged her to answer it, "but I was
afraid that I would be in trouble," she recalled in an interview Tuesday.
She said she spent Monday with her friend, hanging out at his school in
Laurel and meeting his friends. When the boy's father picked him up, Ashleigh
went home with a group of his friends. Afraid to face her mother, she said, she
ended up sleeping in a cold van.
The next morning, she boarded the Metrorail and started riding, unsure
about what she should do next, she said. About 8:20, she was standing on the
platform at L'Enfant Plaza when a friend of her mother's walked by. Aware of the
search for Ashleigh, he took the girl into his office cafeteria for breakfast
and called her mother, Tonya Wingfield recounted.
At home later, Ashleigh said she wouldn't advise anyone to do what she
did. "I would tell them to think it through really carefully -- where they're
going to stay, what they're going to eat, what they would do," she said.
"Because if they really think it through, they would realize it is really
stupid." Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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