By AMY DAVIS
The Progress
A police bulletin went out to the city of Mesquite on Tuesday, Aug. 31, alerting residents to the fact that a young girl was missing.
“The Mesquite Police Department is saturating the area around Hughes Middle School looking for a missing 11-year-old autistic female,” the bulletin read. She “was last seen with black pants, pink shirt, and a “Frozen” backpack. She has brown hair and is approximately 5 feet 7 inches.”
The City of Mesquite instantly mobilized to find this little girl, including a group of 13- and 14-year-old neighborhood boys who were playing basketball at the time. Mounting their bikes and scooters for transportation, the boys were determined to join in the police search.
“We knew we had to stop playing basketball and search the neighborhood,” said Malachi Davis. “I wasn’t sure if I knew exactly who she was, but we couldn’t let her be lost.”
“I typed the police number in my phone so that I could call the police if we saw her,” added Connor Helston. “We were going to split up and go circle around different neighborhoods to see if we could find her.”
“Yeah, we wanted to go street to street to look for her,” said Carlos Gutierreo. “We knew she was probably scared and didn’t know where she was going. We just wanted to be there to help.”
The story ended happily. The missing little girl, who was never identified by name, was found, safe and sound by a family member shortly after the police alert went out.
Sergeant Wyatt Oliver, Public Information Officer for Mesquite Police Department, explained that the department has a system for alerting the public when children go missing. “When we get incidents like this where we have a missing child, we use an alert system called Nixle,” Oliver said.
Nixle is a city-wide alert. Community members can sign up by texting their zip code to 888-777.
“We do these alerts for missing children, power outages that will last for a long time, or if there is a major accident and we need to divert traffic,” Oliver said. “It sends an instant message similar to an Amber Alert, but it is localized. It is a super-fast way for us to get information out. We are able to say what the problem is and what we need.”
In June of 2019 the Nixle Alert was used in Mesquite to find a missing little girl who had gotten lost while bike riding.
“That time, we put the alert out and within 15 minutes, three people had called and told us they had seen her riding her bike and were able to tell us her location,” Oliver said. “Someone even stopped to give her water because it was such a hot summer day. This system is quite a literal lifesaver for these emergency instances.”
Oliver commented that it was commendable that the group of local boys were willing to stop what they were doing and join the search efforts.
“You know boys that age can be pretty rambunctious and make silly kid decisions,” Oliver said. “But something like this just kind of shows their good character and gives you a glimpse into the future of who they really are.”
“Mesquite really is full of a bunch of caring people who just want what is best for everyone,” Oliver concluded.
