A Missouri Senate committee could vote soon on a bill that would create a public alert system to help find missing people who are in danger due to a medical condition. The bill from Sen. Angela Walton Mosley, D-Florissant, would create the Christian Taylor Ferguson (or CTF) Medical Alert System.
“The CTF Medical Alert System shall be set up and maintained in a manner similar to the Amber Alert System,” Mosley said. “The Department of Public Safety shall develop regions to provide the system and to coordinate local law enforcement agencies and public commercial television and radio broadcasters.”
Theda Roxanne Wilson supports the bill named after her late 9-year-old son with special needs, who went missing in St. Louis in 2003. Ferguson’s father, Dawan Feguson, is serving a life without parole in prison for first-degree murder, even though Ferguson’s body has never been found.
“You know, we need law enforcement, and we need them to get this information out, a CTF Medical Alert, out in a situation like what happened to my son cause we didn’t have time to go to the courts and determine all of these other things and wait on law enforcement to act,” Wilson said. “We needed them to act immediately.”
The bill does not specify the type of medical emergency, but they could include things such as mental health conditions, epilepsy, or severe allergies that could lead to anaphylactic shock. Those details could be ironed out by lawmakers as the bill progresses.
“Situations like that, they really need the attention that they deserve,” Wilson explained. “So, like if my son needs his medication within 24 hours, he doesn’t have time to go through the typical protocols that law enforcement may go through if they’re in the office. If they’re not in the office, then you have to wait till Monday…I mean you don’t have that kind of time to waste when you have a person with a life-threatening condition.”
No one testified in opposition to the bill.
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