Amber Alert Delay Rattles U.S.

“Why did Salt Lake police wait 15 hours to issue an Amber Alert for a missing 7-year-old girl?”

The search for a 7-year-old girl in Salt Lake City, Utah, has come to a sad end as her body was found in an apartment in the same complex as her home, about 24 hours after she went missing.

Soon after receiving a missing child report, police began its search, but the Amber Alert, which is issued when police confirm that a child has been abducted, was issued 15 hours after the missing report.

With regard to the police response, a controversy is brewing over whether the police response came too late and when the appropriate time is to issue the alert.

Amber is an acronym for "America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response," and was named for 9-year-old Amber Hagerman who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996.

An Amber Alert is a notification to the general public, by various media outlets, the Internet, and electric bulletin boards in the United States, issued when police confirm that a child has been kidnapped so that the community can organize a search for the missing child.

Below are the details of the circumstances of the case released by Salt Lake City police and local newspapers including The Salt Lake Tribune.

Police received a phone call, saying, “My daughter went missing at around 2 p.m. Monday after leaving home after an argument with her brothers.”

The missing child was 7-year-old Hser Nay Moo, a Burmese refugee who came to the United States with her family last year. Police began searching for her. Around 9:30 p.m., the Utah Attorney General’s Child Abduction Response Team held a meeting.

Some 120 volunteers gathered and searched for the missing child, but there was no sign of hope.

On Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m., police issued an Amber Alert. Reinforced volunteer teams were divided into groups to resume the search and five people have been taken into custody for questioning in connection to her disappearance.

About 7 p.m. that day, her body was found in the bathtub of an apartment of a 21-year-old male living in the same apartment complex. She was apparently brutally beaten to death.

Police estimated she died on Monday afternoon and did not comment on whether she was sexually assaulted. The culprit was found a fellow Burmese who came to the United States a month ago. He and Hser Nay Moo knew each other.

Salt Lake City police faced mounting criticism as some in the community questioned whether police did enough, soon enough. Tribune columnist Rebecca Walsh blamed the police for their Amber Alert delay, saying, “As for child abduction cases, chances are high that three out of four murders are committed within three hours of abduction.”

In particular, the controversy has spread further as the volunteer searchers said they had to wait for nearly five hours until they resumed their search Tuesday in front of the Salt Lake County Sheriffs` office due to a police request to “wait.”

Some pointed out the lack of coordination. Volunteer Alex Rodriguez, 34, said, “I was assigned an area by volunteers, then discovered police had already searched there. So I had to return to the headquarters for a new assignment.”

Meanwhile, many expressed their opinions in support of the police, saying, “It is hard to blame the police alone, since too many alerts are bound to diminish their effectiveness.”

Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Snyder said, "If the Amber Alert is issued without strict rules, it could end up being ignored as a "wolf cry."