Alianna DeFreezeCleveland Police
CLEVELAND, Ohio a Alianna DeFreeze’s school attributed a glitch in an automated parental notification system for failing to alert her parents to her absence in the hours after her disappearance, a school spokesman said.
The 14-year-old boarded an RTA bus on the morning of Jan. 26 but never made it to class at E Prep & Village Prep Woodland Hills Campus, police say.
She was found dead four days later in an abandoned building on Fuller Avenue near East 93rd Street in the city’s Kinsman neighborhood.
Christopher Whitaker, 44, a convicted sex offender, is charged with aggravated murder in her death. Police arrested him Thursday evening.
E Prep & Village Prep Woodland Hills Campus has a system that notifies parents of a child’s absence, but a technical error on Jan. 26 resulted in delayed notification to her mother, Breakthrough Schools spokesman Lyman Millard said.
“We are really heartbroken. When we had discovered that Alianna’s mother hadn’t received the automated call, we were devastated,” Millard said.
Alianna’s family reported her missing at the end of the school day after learning that she never arrived for class, police say. Her mother only learned of the absence that afternoon when she spoke with a dean about an upcoming parent-teacher conference, Millard said.
When a Breakthrough Schools student fails to arrive at class, Millard said the school uses the recently-implemented automated phone call and message system to make notification.
The system calls all phone numbers on file for a particular student a family members and emergency contacts a until it reaches a person on the other end. The system also leaves a message at all the numbers it dialed, Millard said. Those calls generally go out two hours after the start of the school day.
The school is now working to determine why that glitch occurred.
“We had the operations team come down and work with (school staff) to figure out what the error was and get it corrected. We want to make sure any time a child is not in school that their parents get multiple calls,” Millard said.
In the wake of Alianna’s disappearance and homicide, nearly 2,000 people signed a change.org petition asking Ohio lawmakers to require schools to promptly inform parents if children fail to arrive in the morning.
The change.org petition launched on Jan. 31a which had 1,823 supporters as of Friday afternoon a asks Ohio legislators to mandate schools inform parents within one hour of starting time if their child did not arrive.
“For the parents who must send their kids walking or taking a bus, it is imperative to be notified if they have not made it to their destination. By the time Alianna’s mother was notified that her daughter was not in school, it was likely too late,” the petition says.
Read the petition
The petition likens this proposal to the Amber Alert, calling it the “Alianna Alert.”
Petitioners are hoping tighter state-wide regulations about parental notification may prevent an incident of this nature in the future.
“If your child for whatever reason is not in school, there will not be precious hours wasted on the unknown,” the petition says.
Hundreds of people, many of whom live in Northeast Ohio, commented on the petition with reasons why they supported it.
“I know if I got a call that my children never made it to school within the hour something is very wrong and the search could start early,” wrote Latrissa Campbell of Cleveland.
“If a safety measure can be put into place to prevent it from happening again, it should be,” wrote Kelli Birch of South Euclid.
“I agree that parents should be notified. The longer the wait, the worse it always is,” wrote Brittany Williams of Akron.
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