JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For the first time, News4JAX cameras were rolling to see how local first responders train to find vulnerable Duval County residents who wander off.
Dozens of officers and firefighters converged on the Westside at the Equestrian Center for a mock drill to find a missing man.
“He’s a white male, 6′1″, 215 pounds, brown eyes, brown hair. He was last seen wearing a blue hat with baseball logo...he’s diagnosed with alcohol-induced dementia and the family says it’s gotten worse,” shouts Detective Lashante Whitaker, with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Missing Persons’ Unit.
She was standing in the middle of a crowd of first responders describing who they were looking for as part of the training exercise for a local program called MEPSAR — Missing Endangered Persons Search and Rescue — within Duval County.
It was created nearly five years ago after two young Jacksonville children wandered away from their home and into the woods near the Paradise Village mobile home park on the city’s Westside.
Six-year-old Braxton Williams, who has autism, disappeared from the family’s yard in December 2019 with his 5-year-old sister, Bri-ya.
Hundreds of JSO and Jacksonville Fire and Rescue searchers tried to find them. On the third day of searching, data based on children with autism was used to pinpoint where the children might be located.
It worked.
Braxton and Bri’ya were found within 45 minutes of using the data in the search.
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Until then, missing persons’ cases involving vulnerable members of the community were primarily investigated by police.
Now, JSO and JFRD pool their knowledge and resources, using data to create tracking maps that can help create a specific search area and divert crews to locations where clues might be found.
During the training exercise the I-TEAM joined at the Equestrian Center, JSO and JFRD worked together to search the immediate area where the missing man was last seen.
They used clues, like a hat found near a walking trail in the woods, to pinpoint where he was located. The “missing” person, was a JSO detective, who was pretending to be a man with alcohol-induced Alzheimer’s disease.
Data provided through an app that tracks the behaviors of vulnerable people, like those with dementia or Alzheimer’s or people with autism, is inputted into a tracking map that calculates how far a vulnerable person might have walked, the likelihood they would wander far into the woods, and what they might be attracted to. This helps generate their likely path.
Information from family members is also used to help determine where they might be located.
During the training exercise, searchers were told the man they were looking for likes to walk and had previously been found in the woods when he had wandered off.
We followed crews as they searched a walking trail where they discovered the man’s blue baseball cap. That clue was then inputted into a tracking map created by a JFRD mapper, who can then divert other searchers to the area.
Each search crew can download the latest version of the tracking map to their cellphone using a special QR code.
The location of each crew is also visible on the map via GPS.
Don Murray, an engineer with JFRD who specializes in creating the tracker map, said that based on data about Alzheimer’s patients, they knew the missing man could not be far.
“He’s not going at a fast rate, so there’s likely a chance he’ll be within this 0.2, within the first, I want to say few hours,” Murray described pointing to the map on a screen inside JFRD’s command center. “They all go off statistics and the numbers don’t lie.”
Using clues like the missing man’s hat and video captured of him by cameras designed to find deer in the woods, searchers were able to find him within a few hours.
He was sitting in the woods not far from one of the walking trails near the Equestrian Center.
Sgt. Michael Monts, the co-creator of MEPSAR, said there are three critical steps the public should follow if they have a loved one who tends to wander off.
“Call 911 as soon as you know your loved one is missing, don’t wait,” Monts said.
Second, he said, take a picture of your loved one every day, whether they have a disability or not.
“If you have a small child, take a picture of what they’re wearing. I can’t remember what my 18-year-old had on this morning, but if I was to take a picture of him and then he went missing, I could tell the police what he’s wearing that day,” Monts explained.
Third, Monts recommends registering vulnerable people with the city of Jacksonville’s REVAMP program — Registry for Endangered, Vulnerable and Missing Persons — within Duval County.
It’s a database created last year to register people considered at risk of wandering away from their homes. It provides first responders with vital information about the person, which can be used immediately to find them without delay.
When 78-year-old Germilius Nonord wandered away from home last year, Jacksonville police triggered their MEPSAR protocol, but it took longer than they wanted because there was a 2-hour gap between when he was reported missing and when they were able to use their MEPSAR tools to search for him.
The REVAMP registry is designed to reduce that gap.
JFRD Chief Gary Keuhner said the information relatives provide in the registry ranges from whether their loved one has a bus pass to where close relatives live to where they have gone if they’ve wandered before.
“Just all kinds of information like that that allows us to kind of narrow in the search,” Keuhner said.
REVAMP works in conjunction with MEPSAR. Click here to register a vulnerable loved one.
JSO Sgt. Monts said he knows people might use air tags, GPS or apps to track their loved ones, and he doesn’t discourage that. But it’s important to also have them registered because if cellphone service is down, their tracking options might not work.
Nonord’s family had put an air tag in his shoe, but he wasn’t wearing it the day he wandered off so it didn’t work to help find him.
“As an old saying goes, it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” Monts said of registering with REVAMP.
Registration is free and for Duval County residents only.