Two women in right place at right time to find kidnapped child

COLUMBUS (WCMH) – Two young women were in the right place at the right time Tuesday, playing a major role in helping unite a child with his mother after her vehicle was stolen with the baby still in it.

Taeyonna Webb and Nave Dowe said in the moment they found the baby, all they could thing of is his mother and her fear during the whole situation.

Four-month-old Alpha Kamara was in the back of a maroon 2008 Acura MDX with Ohio plates that was stolen from Tamarack Circle Tuesday morning.

The pair said they got the Amber Alerts on their telephones earlier this morning, but the second alert is really what caught their attention.

Child found safe after Columbus Amber Alert 

Webb said she was charging her phone and the Amber Alert went off the second time when she was near the intersection of Ohio and Hildreth avenues.

That is when she spotted the Acura with the license plate that was listed on the alert she had received just moments before.

“I’m driving slow, it’s snow out here,” Webb said. “So I’m driving slow and I see this big red Acura just sitting here and I’m, like, ‘Maybe it’s somebody’s that live here,’ and I checked the Amber Alert again and I see the plates.”

THANK YOU TO THESE HEROES!

Taeyonna Webb & Nave Dowe found the stolen SUV with the 4mo baby inside nearly 4hrs. after the crime occurred.

Deputy Chief Becker @buckeye_becker showed his appreciation at the scene by presenting them with his Division challenge coin.💙#AmberAlert https://t.co/b1y5aNZPUz

— Columbus Ohio Police (@ColumbusPolice) February 10, 2021

Both women said it’s thanks to that second Amber Alert which drew their attention to the SUV and ultimately baby Alpha.

“I stopped, she got out and ran to the car to check if anybody was in it,” Webb said. “There was nobody in the car, but there was a baby.”

“Calm, I opened the door and the baby just looked at me and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Dowe added.

The women then called the police, who later gave them special coins for helping find the child.

Both said they were happy to help, saying all they could think about during the situation was the child’s mother.

“It does because if I was a mother, I know, I know the mother is probably in shock right now, not knowing if she would ever see her baby again,” Webb said.

Both said they urge people to be on the look out when something like this happens again.

“If you see or hear an Amber Alert, don’t just blow past it like, ‘They’ll find it,'” Webb said. “You never know, just like us. I didn’t think I would ever come across a kidnapping car. Like, don’t blow past things like that.”

Missing Black girls and the individuals and organizations trying to help

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent 

Have you seen Iniaya Wilson?

Just 14, Iniaya has been missing from her Columbus, Ohio home since January 25.

She’s African American, has brown hair and brown eyes; standing 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 120 pounds.

Have you seen Skylar Mannie?

From Lancaster, Calif., Skylar is also Black and just 13 years old. She was last seen on Feb. 14.

She has black hair, brown eyes, stands 5 feet 5 inches and weighs 130 pounds.

The two are among the estimated 64,000 Black girls and women across the United States that have gone missing. Iniaya and Skylar are also among an unfortunately growing number of young people listed in the “critically missing” section of the expansive database of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

That includes girls and women of all backgrounds, an important distinction because of the lack of media coverage of African Americans who’ve gone missing.

That has spurred activists and some in Congress to action.

In efforts to address the problem of missing Black children nationwide, Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), and Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) initiated the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls in 2016. Through the caucus, they hope to create public policies that “eliminate significant barriers and disparities experienced by black women.”

According to BlackNews.com, members of the caucus believe that more federal assistance and collaboration is needed to further eliminate the problem.

“I feel like knocking on every attic, every garage to see where those girls are,” House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said. “Let’s be an example to the world that we can’t rest until these girls are found.”

Further, the nonprofit Black and Missing But Not Forgotten, also has focused its attention on spotlighting and finding missing African Americans.

Since 2007, the organization has sought to develop relationships with media, government agencies and the public to ensure that missing African Americans receive prompt attention and concern to garner the best possible outcomes for each case.

A 2010 study about the media coverage of missing children in the United States discovered that only 20 percent of reported stories focused on missing Black children despite it corresponding to 33 percent of the overall missing children cases.

The report revealed that missing Black youth – especially Black girls – are underreported in the news and it seems that many people don’t even care.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that in 2018 alone, there were 424,066 reports of missing children made to law enforcement around the country.

John and Revé Walsh and other child advocates founded the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as a private, non-profit organization to serve as the national clearinghouse and to provide a coordinated, national response to problems relating to missing and exploited children.

Walsh, who formerly hosted “America’s Most Wanted,” now does similar work with his show, “In Pursuit.”

The show, which airs on the Investigation Discovery network, has remained relentless in its pursuit of missing children.

Original Article

21 arrested across Columbus in online child predator sting

COLUMBUS, Ga. — An undercover sting to root out child predators ended early Monday morning with a total 21 men behind bars.

Operation Hidden Guardian is an initiative by state and local investigators to use fake social media and phone app profiles operated by officers to root out predators.

Columbus Police Department Chief Ricky Boren says all 21 suspects agreed to travel to or around Columbus to meet who they thought were underage kids for sex.

Boren’s release says the operation first initiated when the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit (CEACC) and the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) first contacted local law enforcement back in August to organize a sting.

Hidden Guardian started on November 9 and over the course of the investigation, more than 600 messages were exchanged between undercover officers and online profiles.  The release says around 400 of the exchanges were initiated by predators seeking a child and steering conversations towards sexual topics. The release says at times the adults exposed the “minor” to obscene, pornographic images or asked the “child” to take nude photos.

Over the past five days, the 21 suspects who either lived in Columbus or traveled to the area for sex with a minor were arrested.

Boren says the suspects range from 22 to 55 with all kinds of professions — from a local car wash attendant to a school custodian all the way from North Carolina.

“There is no profile, there is no standard child predator,” says Debbie Garner, the commander of the Georgia ICAC.

Garner says it’s not uncommon for such predators to have inappropriate encounters with children in their past, even if they have no prior convictions.

“Most often they admit to prior sexual contact with children in the past. As the commander of the task force, that’s very important to me. It tells me we are actually arresting the people who are preying on children and so that these operations really do work,” she says.

“You know there was one person who basically admitted that they had been thinking about touching children and that they felt as though that would have happened in the future. They were almost happy that they were caught.”

Garner suggests parents utilize resources like NetSmartz.Org, an site operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The site features tips to keep children’s information safe and signs to watch out for to avoid predators. NetSmartz.Org even has videos from survivors who tell their terrifying encounters with online predators.

Some of the tips include not talking to anyone you don’t know in real life, even if their profile age seems similar to your own.

“It may look like they are a 16-year-old boy or a 16-year-old girl and that’s not actually who they are. you know a lot of times kids will say well they’re a kid too and they’ll accept their friend request,” Garner says. “All they have to do, all a child predator has to do is get one kid to accept their friend request and then the other kids see that they’re friends with them, and then they accept their friend request, so it’s things like that we try to teach kids.”

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