After receiving a report of a boy who didn’t show up to school Monday morning, one of the first actions the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office took was asking the public for help on Facebook.
Within 35 minutes, more than 350 people had shared the article. By sharing the article, it was reposted to each of their Facebook pages where their friends saw the post detailing the boy’s appearance and last known location.
The boy, who left his home on Picadilly Loop around 8:30 a.m. to walk to Dare Elementary School, was found less than two hours later by school maintenance staff, said Capt. James Richardson of the YPSO.
“Social media is a great tool to get info out quickly and at times may work or help bring a resolution to an incident,” Richardson said.
By 3 p.m., about five hours after the original post went up, it had been shared by 885 people, attracting a slew of comments expressing relief the boy had been found. A second post, which simply said the boy had been found, picked up 162 likes and 110 shares in about five hours.
Some of the commenters talked about the AMBER Alert system, with a few saying the system was offline due to the federal government shutdown. The AMBER Alert system — named after a 9-year-old Texas girl who was kidnapped and murdered — is a national program that teams police with media outlets to rapidly disseminate information about missing children who are believed to be in imminent danger.
The system was never down, however. According to the Twitter account of the Director of the Department of Justice’s Public Affairs, the AMBER Alert system never went offline. A Department of Justice website that tracks all active alerts in the nation was offline for a time, though that website has been restored to “prevent confusion,” according to Fallon’s Twitter page.
Fallon said AMBER Alerts are issued by municipalities and states.
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