Ebony Alert leads to recovery of missing Los Angeles girl after airing on FOX 11

LOS ANGELES - A missing 17-year-old girl was found safe Friday after California Highway Patrol issued its first-ever "Ebony Alert," which aired on FOX 11 earlier this week.

An Ebony Alert acts like an Amber Alert or Silver Alert but is geared specifically toward finding missing Black youth and young women. 

FOX 11's Marla Tellez spoke with California State Senator Steven Bradford, the lawmaker who first introduced this national alert system and spearheaded the program back in 2020. Black women and girls make up approximately 18% of all missing persons cases despite accounting for only about 7% of the population, according to 2022 data from the National Crime Information Center and U.S. Census Bureau.

"Evidence shows that African-American young girls and women are ignored," said Bradford in a previous interview with FOX 11. "The resources are not committed to the same level as their counterparts when they come up missing."

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Ebony Alerts follow similar criteria to Amber Alerts, but with slightly broader qualifications. The age range for an Ebony Alert expands past 17 years of age to 25 years of age, but there must still be reason to believe that the missing person is in imminent danger with no other available information that could lead to their recovery.

"When was the last time you drove down the freeway and saw an Amber Alert for a missing African-American young woman or girl? But we've all known about the Gabby Petitos of the world," said Bradford. "We just want the same level of commitment by both media and law enforcement."