New Alert System Named After Missing South Elgin Girl
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A new alert system, called the Kianna Alert, is intended to help more people. The alert is named after a 17-year-old South Elgin girl named Kianna Galvin who disappeared in 2016.
The Amber Alert is only for people under 16 or people with disabilities. Police also have to believe the person is in danger. The Kianna alert does not require proof of danger.
Like the Amber Alert, in order to get a Kianna Alert, a missing person report has to be on file with the police.
Kianna had been previously reported as a runaway. She had left her home in South Elgin to go to Jim Hansen Park. When she wasn't heard from after a couple of days, her parents reported her missing. They say they didn't do it earlier because she didn't qualify for the Amber Alert. Police later found Kianna's blood in a neighbor's trash.
Friday night Kianna's mother stood with representatives from the Missing Persons Awareness Network in Jim Hansen Park. The network created the alert. Kianna's mother believes an alert might have saved her daughter's life.
"I reported by daughter missing on Mother's Day, which was the eighth of May," Kianna's mother Fioana Galvin said. "She left my house on May 6. Knowing my daughter as well as I know her, she wouldn't have just vanished off the face of the planet without any contact. And I think if this alert would've went out as soon as I reported her missing to the police, the case would have been solved by now."
Galvin says she doesn't have any updates on the case, but there is a person of interest who is incarcerated for another crime. She says that person was the last person seen with her daughter.
To subscribe text the word "ADD" to (312) 561-3319. You can also log on to www.missinginillinois.org to subscribe your cell phone and/or email address.