Missing girl from Disneyland found, but Disney's decision to keep her disappearance quiet from the press may jeopardize the life of any missing child

No one heard about a missing girl at Disneyland last week
A lot of people may not have heard about this on the news, but on election night a week ago on Tuesday, November 8th, a 15-year-old girl went missing from the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.

The news of the missing girl, Donni Knycole Byrd, was only covered in the press yesterday, November 14, by KCBS-TV Los Angeles and the Orange County Register, nearly a week after the occurrence happened.

We heard from inside sources that there was a girl missing from Disneyland last week, but we could not confirm if the rumor was true as there was no details available until Monday when Disney finally decided to go public, so we didn't cover the story. But we would have if details were available because for a missing child, time in notifying the public is most crucial for making a safe recovery of any missing child.

Apparently, Donni Byrd was last heard from at 8:15 p.m. on November 8th at Disney's Grand California Hotel & Spa at the Disneyland Resort. At 8 p.m., she texted her mother that she was going for a walk in the lobby area of the hotel and would return to her hotel room in about an hour.


At 8:15 p.m., Byrd's mother received another text from the teenager that she was returning to her room, but she never showed up, according to Anaheim Police. A child abduction was suspected, but for some strange reason, the story never got on the news as you would expect for any child gone missing at the "Happiest Place on Earth."

Late Monday night, a full six days after she had gone missing, the teenager was suddenly reported found "safe" by the Anaheim Police Department on the same day she was reported missing on the press.

So why did it take nearly a week for the news to get out about the search for a possibly abducted child at Disneyland?

The reason you probably didn't hear about the missing child on the news was because Disneyland officials and the Anaheim Police decided not to activate an Amber Alert on the missing child, out of fear of bad publicity, despite the fact that the girl was missing for 6 full days and foul play was initially suspected in her disappearance.

We cannot emphasize how completely irresponsible this kind of inaction is, given the fact that a child's life may have been hanging in the balance if she were abducted by a dangerous child predator, and apparently, child abduction at Disneyland was suspected by Anaheim Police in this missing girl's case.

In cases where a child is suspected to have gone missing from a possible abduction, it is absolutely essential to activate an Amber Alert as soon as possible, so that the public and other law enforcement agencies in the state and across the county can be enlisted to help find the child because the longer you wait to activate the alert, the chances of finding a missing child safe drops precipitously over time.


Had an Amber Alert been activated, news of a missing child would have gone public statewide and across the nation within a matter of minutes—not a week—to enlist the public's and state law enforcement's help to try to find the missing child, but it appears Disneyland and Anaheim Police sat on this information and kept largely quiet rather than let it become a national story for the press. The consequences of their inactions could have turned out disastrously for the child had this been a worst-case scenario.

An Amber Alert in California immediately enlists the public's help to find a
missing child by broadcasting details crucial to recovering the missing child 
We checked the Amber Alert website for active missing children and ones that were successfully found, and Donni Byrd was not and has never been on that list. This also explains why it took nearly a week for the news of the missing child to get out to the public.

Clearly, if you weren't going to activate an Amber Alert on Donni Byrd, then the least you could have done was to tell the press, so that the public could have been on the look out for the missing teen.

Of course, we don't know why it took nearly a week to find the missing child or the circumstances of why she went missing in the first place, but the Anaheim Police Department is remaining tight-lipped about the incident, fueling even more suspicion and speculation about their own conduct during the protracted 6-day search for the missing girl.


Anaheim Police did, however, release a low-key flyer on its Facebook page and Twitter account about the missing girls on November 8th, but that's not the same thing as activating a nationwide Amber Alert.

Anaheim Police Chief Raul Quezada
The reason that kind of low-key notification to the public is useless is because no one knew or heard about the flyer at the time of the disappearance to be of any help in finding the missing child. As the saying goes, "See something, say something."

Clearly, officials from Disneyland and the Anaheim Police Department don't have their priorities in order when dealing with a potentially disastrous and devastating emergency like a missing or abducted child.

It's far better in cases like that to err on the side of extreme caution by activating an Amber Alert for a missing child—even if it turns out to be a false alarm—because a child's safety and possibly his/her life may be in grave danger, and that's all that really matter at that point.

By worrying solely about their own interests from this kind of bad press getting out on the evening news, both Disney and the City of Anaheim failed in an epic way in their duty to protect the public's interest in finding missing children everywhere.

6 days to tell the press? Really!? Shame on both Disney and the Anaheim Police for not doing the right thing!


Sources:

Comments

Post a Comment