Les Brock and his friend Willie Schwinn were sitting down for breakfast at a restaurant in Huron, Ohio, when they looked out the window and saw the car wanted in an AMBER Alert. The alert was issued July 1 and showed up on Brock's cellphone a few hours earlier at 5:30 a.m. The two construction workers decided to use an acronym to remember the suspect's license plate.
Earlier that morning the Cleveland, Ohio, Police Department received a call that a non-custodial father had taken his 8-year-old son from a family member. The suspect, Kevin Criss, had a protective order to stay away from his son.
“It met all the AMBER Alert criteria,” said Ohio State Patrol Captain and Ohio AMBER Alert Coordinator Rob Jackson. “Everything about the alert worked correctly.”
The alert prompted Brock and Schwinn to start following the suspect and call 911. The suspect was apprehended by law enforcement officers at 9:30 a.m. The child was safely returned to his mother.
“The child is abducted and I'm gonna do whatever I can,” Brock told a reporter. “Neither one of us have kids; so we were following that guy to the end.”
Jackson is grateful these two men went to such extraordinary measures to respond to the alert. “It was fantastic,” he said. “The alert did everything it was designed to do.”
This AMBER Alert was significant because Ohio issued the alert during early morning hours with the new Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system. The state had just recently approved using WEA 24 hours a day, whenever an alert was issued.
In April, the Ohio AMBER Alert Committee met with representatives of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and decided to use WEA for AMBER Alerts during all hours. Despite recommendations to not use WEA during early hours, committee members said children are abducted 24 hours a day so the alerts should go out 24 hours a day.
Jackson said this alert is a good example and proof that the committee made the right decision for Ohio and efforts to educate the public about the alerts paid off. “WEA reaches people who are not reached any other way,” he said. “WEA was the key to success in this alert because it allows the maximum number of people who are available to find the suspect.”