Whitney Decker, the mother of three young girls that were found dead in Washington, is urging reforms to the Amber Alert system after state authorities declined to issue one when her daughters went missing.
Wenatchee Police in Chelan County, Washington, had requested an Amber Alert after she reported that her daughters hadn’t returned from a scheduled visit with their father, Travis Decker, on May 30. Washington State Patrol, however, denied this request, telling HuffPost there wasn’t sufficient evidence that an abduction was taking place, or that Travis would harm his daughters.
“They did not see him as an immediate physical danger to his children despite the fact that he had a well-established history of mental health issues and had they…seen it that way, those children might still be alive,” Whitney’s attorney Arianna Cozart told local NBC affiliate KING 5 News. “That’s the thing that is so brutal, and the one thing that she’s really hoping can be changed in this tragedy.”
Amber Alerts are designed specifically to respond to child abductions and allow law enforcement to send a text alert to cell phones in the area about a missing child. The Washington State Patrol eventually issued an Endangered Missing Persons Advisory on June 1, though that does not immediately include a text alert.
