A statewide Ebony Alert is active for 13-year-old Parys Jones, who was last seen walking near Hargrave Street and Welton Way in Inglewood on Wednesday afternoon. Jones is described as 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighing 200 pounds, with blonde hair and brown eyes, and was last wearing a beige t-shirt and blue jeans. She is believed to be on foot.
The California Highway Patrol activated the alert on behalf of the Inglewood Police Department, according to a post from CHP - Alerts. The department requested the activation after CHP was notified about Jones's disappearance on Thursday, roughly 24 hours after she was last seen at approximately 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Anyone who spots Jones is asked to call 911 immediately.
Ebony Alerts are a relatively new tool in California's emergency notification system. The alert was created through Senate Bill 673, authored by state Senator Steven Bradford and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2023, making California the first state in the nation to establish a dedicated emergency alert specifically for missing Black youth and young women, according to The Guardian. The law took effect January 1, 2024.
Why This Alert System Exists
Under California Government Code Section 8594.14, Ebony Alerts apply specifically to Black individuals between the ages of 12 and 25 who go missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances, are at risk, or are cognitively or physically impaired, per the California Highway Patrol. Local police and the CHP must exhaust local search resources and demonstrate the missing person is in potential danger before an alert goes out.
Once activated, an Ebony Alert authorizes CHP to use electronic highway message signs, coordinate with local television and radio broadcasters, and publish advisories across social media within the requested geographic area, the same broadcast infrastructure used for AMBER Alerts. The CHP's Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center, known as ENTAC, serves as the state's central clearinghouse for coordinating these regional advisories on behalf of local departments like Inglewood's, a system Hoodline detailed in its earlier report on a San Jose teen's brief disappearance.
A Response to Long-Standing Disparities
Lawmakers created the Ebony Alert system in response to a documented pattern: missing Black children have historically been disproportionately categorized by law enforcement as runaways, a label that automatically disqualifies them from standard AMBER Alerts and reduces media attention, according to reporting cited by PBS. That classification gap has real statistical weight behind it. FBI National Crime Information Center data for 2023, compiled by the Black and Missing Foundation, found Black individuals accounted for 40% of all reported missing person cases nationwide, 136,553 out of 357,202 cases, despite representing roughly 13% of the U.S. population.
Inglewood, where Jones was last seen, sits in southwestern Los Angeles County and has a population of more than 104,000 residents, with Black or African American residents making up approximately 38.5% of the local population, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. The city is one of the county's historic Black population centers.
Past Alerts Have Ended Quickly
The state's first-ever Ebony Alert, issued January 4, 2024, on behalf of the Long Beach Police Department for a missing 17-year-old Black girl, ended with the teen found safe the following day. Other regional cases have followed a similar pattern, including a South Bay alert for 15-year-old Kelsey Walker and a case involving a missing woman named Tiffanie Russ in La Mesa. California's model has also spread beyond its borders, with Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Massachusetts lawmakers introducing similar Ebony Alert legislation inspired by the state's framework.
It remains unclear what specific information prompted the roughly 24-hour gap between Jones's last sighting Wednesday and the alert's activation Friday, or whether investigators have identified a direction of travel since she was last seen on foot near Hargrave Street and Welton Way. Inglewood Police has not released additional details beyond the description shared in the CHP bulletin. Anyone with information on Jones's whereabouts is urged to call 911.
