Texas is expanding its statewide missing person alert system to now include adults.
The new alert system was prompted by the death of Cayley Mandadi, a 19-year-old cheerleader attending Trinity University in San Antonio. Mandadi was killed and raped by her boyfriend in 2017.
Family and friends said they believe if there had been an alert covering abducted adults, Mandadi might still be alive today.
Allison Steele is Mandadi’s mother. She helped push lawmakers to pass a bill this session to create the new alert, which will be called CLEAR. She said the name has been intentional ever since they drafted the bill. Each letter represents a name of an adult victim who was killed after being abducted. C is for Cayley.
“And these names were actually in this order on that one-pager (draft) presented just like this and the word CLEAR was essentially spelled out,” Steele said.
Steve McCraw is the director for the Texas Department of Public Safety. He said the state’s AMBER alert system covers missing children and SILVER alerts cover missing seniors, but up until now there has not been a system for abducted adults.
“Getting this done from a law enforcement standpoint was vital, because we did talk about that gap and we don’t want to miss anybody in between it,” McCraw said.
The state will begin issuing CLEAR alerts on September 1.
Ryan Poppe can be reached at RPoppe@TPR.org and on Twitter at @RyanPoppe1.
