CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. – A Chippewa Falls father has 63,000 signatures to petition state authorities to create a “Lily Alert” for missing children who don’t meet the current criteria for an Amber Alert to be issues through mass media. Eric Henry said the that 10-year-old Lily Peters fell through cracks in Wisconsin’s Amber Alert system. She was reported overdue home at 9 p.m., Sunday. Her body was not found until the next morning in a wooded area in Chippewa Valls. She had been strangled and raped. There was no Amber Alert because her case didn’t meet all these criteria:
> The child must be under 17.
> The child must be believed to be in danger of serious harm.
> There must be enough description about the child, the suspect or the suspect’s vehicle for the public to help meaningfully
The criteria are intended to weed out false alarms, which, say authorities, could lull the public into complacency and weaken the Amber system’s effectiveness. It is true that local police can override the Amber guidelines locally. In the case of Lily Peters, she probably was dead already when her father reported her missing.