New Pictures of Missing Teen and New Questions About Delayed Alert

There are new pictures of a missing girl from
Weatherford.  The pictures show JaRay
Wilson, 16, texting on her phone inside the Hydro Mini-Mart on October 14th,
it was later that night her phone went silent. 
Her parents say phone records indicate that day she sent messages to
10-pages worth of phone numbers.  But
just after 7 p.m., her phone went silent. 
The Wilsons believe that was the first clue that something was
suspicious about her disappearance. 

However, authorities waited more than a week to put out a
state-wide alert to the public saying JaRay may have been taken against her
will and possibly sold into human trafficking. 
The Wilson family says there should be an automatic alert that goes out
when a child disappears under suspicious circumstances, but don’t fit the
criteria for an AMBER Alert. 

It turns out; Oklahoma has a Missing and Endangered
Alert.  However the Department of Public
Safety says it won’t issue an alert until one is requested by the
investigators.  In JaRay’s case,
investigators say they thought she was a runaway and didn’t confirm reports she
was taken against her will until several days after her disappearance.

The Wilson family says even though there was a state-wide
alert, there is no national standard for an endangered missing alert.  They would like to see one created.  The family’s plea for help was heard after a
Fox 25 report.

“I saw the family's anguish and i thought they should know
something is already in place that could really help,” said Paul Murphy, the
AMBER Alert Coordinator for the state of Utah. 
Murphy helped put together guidelines that are issued by the U.S.
Department of Justice informing states about how to implement or enhance
endangered missing alerts.  “Instead of
reinventing the wheel they could use a system that is already in place and has
saved hundreds of people.”

Oklahoma’s system follows many of the same guidelines in Murphy’s
manual.  The alert is not as invasive as
the AMBER Alert, which is a key difference outlined in the Department of
Justice guidelines.  Murphy says it
should be just as important though and adopted by more states, because he’s
seen endangered missing alerts find dozens of children before it was too late.  “I would hate for a tragedy to make people
aware of the endangered missing advisory.”

Posted: Thursday, November 15 2012, 09:33 PM CST