16-year-old reported missing in error
A breakdown of communication involving Carli Atkinsons and her guardians resulted in her being reported as missing last Saturday.
An Ananda Alert was activated for the 16-year-old student of Minott Terrace in Kingston 13 when her grandfather, who was scheduled to pick her up from her school in the Corporate Area, went there and did not see her.
Yesterday, when the Jamaica Observer visited her house, her grandmother Marie Sparkes confirmed that Carli was not missing.
Sparkes explained that when the grandfather went to the high school at approximately 5:00 pm and Carli was nowhere to be found, he telephoned her, asking what the schoolgirl was wearing when she left the house Saturday morning.
According to Sparkes, not knowing that the grandfather would file a missing person report, she told him what Carli was wearing.
“Mi seh she had on a black tights, a black top, and a black slippers. He said ‘OK’, and him hang up. I called him back bout 5 o’clock and he said she still don’t reach. He said he had to leave because him still don’t see her. In the night about 7 o’ clock I keep on calling the mother and the mother said she keep on calling her friend and her friend keep on hanging up the phone,” Sparkes told the Observer .
Later that evening, Sparkes said she was told by one of her friends that she received a message from another friend in Canada stating that Carli was missing.
After attempts to contact Carli’s grandfather were futile, Sparkes said she asked one of her sons to call his father, which he did.
“Him ask him father where is Carli? Him a go round, a go round, a go round. So in return he said ‘she is here’. He went and made a report without telling me that he is going to do it,” she uttered.
Up to press time yesterday, the constabulary’s Corporate Communication Unit said it had not received a report to indicate that Carli was not missing.
The National Children’s Registry recently reported a reduction in reports of missing children for last year.
A total of 1,512 children were reported missing in 2018, which is the lowest figure since the establishment of the Ananda Alert system in 2009.
In 2017, a total of 1,674 children were reported missing, with 1,476 returned. There is a 90 per cent return/recovery rate of missing children in Jamaica.
