Families Of Mentally Disabled Want Amber Alert-Type System
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - A Fort Worth mother is hoping to find her daughter who has special needs. Autumn Lee Ware has been missing for six days now.
"I just can't hardly stand this," says her mother, Cindy Corbin. "If you see her bring her back."
Ware has been spotted in downtown Fort Worth, but there has been no alert issued for her. Autumn's mom says there needs to be a system to find missing people like her daughter.
"They need it as much as an Alzheimer's patient as much as a child," says Corbin "They are the same category maybe even more so."
Endangered missing children have the Amber Alert. The elderly have the Silver Alert. But there is no such system for tracking down the missing with mental disabilities.
And it looks like a bill that would create one won't pass either all because of budget problems.
Deborah Hailey thinks that's a mistake. Her daughter Tiffany Demus, who was mentally challenged, disappeared from home in Mansfield in November.
"I think she walked too far and couldn't find her way back," explains Hailey.
Demus, 31, was found just miles from her home in a creek. According to the Medical Examiner's office, she drowned. Because she didn't meet Amber Alert Criteria one was never issued.
"She didn't know she wasn't going to get back home just like they do it for the elderly and children they need to do it for the mentally disabled also," says Hailey.
John Butler helped in the search for Demus. "It's just shocking that nothing like this is already implemented," says Butler.
His own brother William, 29, has Down Syndrome. "It terrifies me to know that something could happen to my little brother," explains Butler "He could be seen my multiple people who wouldn't even know they should be looking for him."
Butler has been working on a bill with State Representative Vicki Truitt which pushes for an alert system that would include those with special needs.
But he's been told a new alert system would come with new costs.
He was headed to Austin on Tuesday for a hearing but has been told not to even come because the state's budget problems will likely kill the bill.
"We don't understand who how this is because in the eyes of the state this does not make fiscal sense it's not going to be pushed through even regardless," says Butler.
State Representative Truitt said "Tiffany's tragedy revealed a gaping hole in Texas law to alert media outlets regarding missing persons with developmental disabilities. If passed this bill will fill that void and surely lead to better endings than Tiffany's."
For Demus' mother it would have been worth it and she's convinced it would have saved her daughter's life.
"I want to see it to save someone else child to keep having to go through what i had to go through it," says Hailey.
