DeKalb County police are asking the public for help finding a 70-year-old woman who vanished from a quiet Ellenwood neighborhood. Joanne Howell was last seen Friday in the 3600 block of Satellite Terrace, wearing a pink bonnet and a white shirt, according to police. She stands 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 134 pounds.
DeKalb County police asked for help locating the missing elderly woman, as reported by Atlanta News First. Anyone with information on Howell's whereabouts is urged to contact the DeKalb County Police Department's Special Victims Unit at 770-724-7710. The Satellite Terrace block where she was last seen sits in an unincorporated stretch of southern DeKalb County near Telstar Drive and Orbit Circle, a residential area built up mostly during the 1970s and 1980s, per Redfin.
A Familiar and Urgent Pattern in DeKalb County
Howell's disappearance follows a string of recent searches for older adults across the county. Just days earlier, on July 29, DeKalb authorities searched for 78-year-old Anna Heard after she was reported missing from the 7000 block of Pleasant Hill Road in Lithonia, according to 11Alive. In January, a multi-day search for 79-year-old Ernestine Merritt ended when her body was found in a wooded creekbed roughly a quarter-mile from her home, as Hoodline reported at the time in its piece on the search for Ernestine Merritt.
It is not yet known whether police have activated Georgia's Mattie's Call for Howell or whether she has any known medical or cognitive impairments; those details remain open questions in this case. Mattie's Call, the state's emergency alert for missing elderly or disabled adults, was established by the Georgia General Assembly in 2006 and can be triggered by local police through the Georgia Bureau of Investigation when a missing person is believed to be in immediate danger, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The program was named for an Alzheimer's patient who wandered from her Atlanta home in 2004.
Why Speed Matters in These Searches
Georgia law changed in 2018 through the Stacey Nicole English Act, which bars law enforcement from enforcing a waiting period before opening a missing persons investigation or activating an emergency alert for a medically endangered adult, per the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. That immediacy matters: data cited by the Alzheimer's Association Coastal Georgia Regional Office and reported by the Savannah Tribune indicates that missing individuals with dementia or cognitive impairments who are not found within the first 24 hours face a 46 percent chance of being found seriously injured or deceased. Wandering is considered one of the most dangerous behaviors linked to cognitive decline.
Statewide, Mattie's Call activations have climbed in recent years, rising from 222 in 2016 to 272 in 2017, according to GBI records cited by 11Alive. State officials have attributed the increase to an aging population and wider adoption of the alert system by local police departments.
DeKalb's Tech-Heavy Search Resources
DeKalb County police have significant technology at their disposal when searching for missing seniors. The department's $21 million Real-Time Crime Center includes license plate readers, connected camera networks, and dedicated Drone First Responder units equipped with thermal imaging, capabilities Hoodline detailed in its report on the county's $21M surveillance hub. It remains unclear whether that drone or camera network has produced any active leads in the Satellite Terrace neighborhood in Howell's case.
The search falls under the department's Special Victims Unit, which investigates missing person reports across DeKalb's unincorporated areas, a jurisdiction spanning 267 square miles and serving a population of more than 770,000 residents, according to county figures. DeKalb also runs annual community Missing Persons and DNA Drive events with the District Attorney's Office and its Cold Case Task Force, collecting family DNA and updating records in national databases like NCIC and NamUs, as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta.
Anyone who has seen Joanne Howell or has information about her whereabouts is asked to call the DeKalb County Police Department's Special Victims Unit.
