A 16-year-old Arkansas girl has been safely located after police issued an AMBER alert on Monday.
Autumn Nicole Lyon was last believed to have been traveling to Texas with Adrian Garces, a 30-year-old man whom police said she met online. She was reported missing from Mineral Springs, Howard County on Saturday.
Law enforcement did not state where exactly Autumn was found. Newsweek has contacted Arkansas State Police (ASP) for information via email outside of standard working hours.
Police believed the pair travelled to Texas together in a gray Ford F-150 pickup with a Texas license plate.
Garces was taken into custody in Texas charged with Interference with Custody. He was awaiting extradition back to Arkansas, ASP said.
Arkansas State Police
Previous police reports conflicted over Autumn’s eye color, but Arkansas State Police confirmed to Newsweek they were blue.
In the U.S., 664,776 people went missing on average between 2007 and 2020, according to the federally funded National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUS) database. This translates to around 6.5 missing persons for every 100,000.
NamUS says there are 25,124 open missing persons cases at present across the country, although it states this is not reflective of the true number, only those that have been voluntarily reported. Around 2,300 Americans are reported missing each day.
“In general, there is no federal requirement for reporting missing persons cases to NamUS. So, without mandatory reporting by law enforcement, the number of actual missing persons in each state is actually much higher than reported,” Jesse Goliath, a Mississippi professor who launched a missing persons repository separate from NamUS previously told Newsweek.
In February, Newsweek mapped missing persons cases by state.
NamUS data at the time showed that Oklahoma had the largest percentage of missing people in the country, with 16 missing per 100,000. Arizona followed with 14.2.
Louisiana and Arkansas were also above the national average. Per 100,000 people, Arkansas had 11.6 missing.
Massachusetts had the lowest percentage, with 2.7 per 100,000.
A separate AMBER alert in Arkansas for a missing three-year-old boy was cancelled last month. Believed to have wandered off alone, the infant was safely located.
What Is an AMBER Alert?
AMBER alerts are an emergency response system that shares information regarding child abductions in order to encourage to public to assist with search efforts.
AMBER stands for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response.
The system was named after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996.
The system utilizes media broadcasts, highway signs and other channels to share descriptions of the suspect, vehicle, and child involved. 1,200 children were found via the system as of 2023.
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about missing persons or crime statistics in your state? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com
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