DALLAS — The family of an 8-year-old with severe non-verbal autism said they are frustrated with the Dallas Police Department and pushing for change, one week after he was found dead after a day-long search.
Dallas Police said it is always looking at things they can do better, but the department said it put several resources toward the search.
On Friday, April 30, Keydall Jones went missing around 7:15 in the morning. Dallas Police said officers were called around 7:45; around 9:45 they notified the missing persons unit, and at 11 they shared the critical missing report with local media. DPD said it had at least eight officers assigned to the search, with K-9s, too.
The family said police didn’t do enough.
“There was never a police officer in the middle of us, telling us or guiding us or updating us or anything, at no point in time, at least until about 1,” Keydall’s grandmother Maulcia Reece said.
“This baby has never been away from here, he wouldn’t know what to do," she added. "It was like the hardest thing as a grandmother, I couldn’t find him. And it was getting later and later.”
Family friend and Attorney Michael Lavine said the police should have issued an endangered missing persons’ alert, an alert for people with an intellectual disability, which includes autism.
“It’s a very simple question. Are they in danger? And do they have a disability? And DPD knew from moment one the answer to those questions were, 'yes,' here,” Lavine said. “They didn’t have to have any evidence whatsoever that he was taken. All they had to know was that he was missing and he suffered from one of these disabilities. That’s it.”
According to federal law, only two alerts get pushed to cell phones statewide – an AMBER Alert and a Blue Alert, with the former being an emergency message issued when child has been abducted, and the latter issued during the search for someone accused of killing or seriously hurting law enforcement officers.
An endangered missing person’s alert is similar to a critical missing report, but is mainly shared with local media.
In Texas there are the following alerts:
- AMBER – AMBER Alerts are issued when a child is believed to have been abducted, may be in danger of an assault, bodily injury, or death.
- SILVER – SILVER Alerts are issued for missing older adults who suffer from an impaired mental condition, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia.
- BLUE – BLUE alerts are issued for wanted persons who are suspected of killing or seriously injuring a law enforcement officer.
- ENDANGERED MISSING – ENDANGERED MISSING alerts are issued for missing persons with an intellectual disability or developmental disorder
- CAMO – CAMO alerts are issued for missing, current or former, members of the military who suffer from a documented mental illness.
- CLEAR – CLEAR alerts are issued for missing adults who may be in imminent danger of injury or death, or whose disappearance is believed to be involuntary.
Either way, the family felt the search required more officers and help from the Dallas Police Department.
“He’s an 8-year-old, severely autistic, non-verbal child. He can’t go up to anyone and ask them for help, he’s going to run,” Reece, the child's grandmother, explained. “I would say by about 2 o'clock, I never saw a police officer anywhere, near the apartments, or anything, or meeting one, ever. I didn’t see one.”
Keydal was later found dead in a nearby apartment pool; police believe he drowned. Reece said her family's lives "will never be the same."
"Having to see my grandbaby on the side of that pool and he was there for hours and they got a tarp over him, it was just like I couldn’t,” Reece said in tears.
Now, she said her family is going to fight for a "Keydall alert" for children with autism.
"They’re disabled, they can’t help themselves," Reece said.
"We want to fight for the fact that there should have been an alert," she said. “He’s gone, and that’s just something that we want to fight for."