A 44-year-old Inglewood man with mental health issues has been missing for a year and a half, and it was only this week that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department put out a public call for help finding him. KC Tard was last seen on February 18, 2025, on the 3600 block of Kensley Drive, in a residential stretch of eastern Inglewood near the Crenshaw Boulevard corridor. He has not contacted his relatives since, and they say they are worried about his wellbeing.
The gap between Tard's disappearance and Wednesday's public bulletin spans roughly 18 months, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which released the special bulletin under Sheriff Robert G. Luna's office. The bulletin lists Tard as 5 feet 7 inches tall and 300 pounds, with short black Afro-style hair and brown eyes; his last-known clothing is listed as unknown. The department did not detail when the missing person report itself was filed, only that its Homicide Bureau's Missing Persons Detail is now seeking the public's help.
Why This Case Is Classified At-Risk
Tard's case carries an official at-risk designation, a status defined under California Penal Code Section 14215 for missing people who are mentally impaired, in need of medical attention, or missing under circumstances outside their normal habits, according to Justia Law. That classification is meant to trigger priority handling by investigators. State law separately requires, under Penal Code Section 14211, that police and sheriff's departments accept missing person reports without delay and without imposing waiting periods, prioritizing them over property crimes, per Justia Law's summary of the statute.
Under LASD's Manual of Policy and Procedures, missing adult investigations across the department's contract cities and unincorporated areas are handled centrally by the Homicide Bureau's Missing Persons Detail, based in Monterey Park, rather than at the local patrol station level used for juvenile cases. That centralized structure is why the public bulletin lists Detective J. Bailey and the Homicide Bureau's Monterey Park address, 1 Cupania Circle, as the point of contact rather than a local Inglewood-area station.
Age Kept Tard Off Two Statewide Alert Systems
Despite being classified at-risk, Tard does not qualify for either of California's two most targeted emergency alert systems. The Ebony Alert, created under Senate Bill 673 in 2023 and described by CalMatters as the nation's first alert dedicated to missing Black youth, is limited to missing Black individuals between 12 and 25 years old — well below Tard's age of 44. California's Silver Alert program, meanwhile, is aimed primarily at missing seniors 65 and older or cognitively impaired adults, and its electronic highway message boards are further restricted to cases with a verified vehicle description, as Hoodline has previously reported. Tard was last seen on foot, with no vehicle listed in the bulletin, leaving both systems out of reach for his case.
The scale of missing person cases in Los Angeles County helps explain why individual cases like Tard's can take time to surface publicly. A county task force report found that nearly 28,000 people are reported missing across Los Angeles County each year, accounting for roughly 22 percent of all missing person reports filed statewide, according to a February 2018 County of Los Angeles document. Nationally, California consistently records the highest total number of active missing person cases of any state, per federal data cited by World Population Review, though the state's per-capita rate remains close to the national average given its population size.
A 2016 Hate Crime Charge Adds Context
Tard has a documented history in the South Los Angeles and Inglewood area predating his disappearance. In March 2016, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged then-34-year-old KC Tard Jr. with felony battery with injury on transit personnel, along with a hate crime allegation, following a November 2015 attack on a Sikh Metro bus driver, according to the Los Angeles Times. That attack occurred on a bus traveling along Manchester Boulevard into Inglewood, the same broader area where Tard was last seen this past year.
Anyone with information on Tard's whereabouts is asked to contact the LASD Homicide Bureau's Missing Persons Detail at 323-890-5500, attention Detective J. Bailey. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through Crime Stoppers by calling 800-222-8477, through the P3 Tips app on Google Play or the Apple App Store, or via lacrimestoppers.org. The bulletin lists Tard's case under NIC M579000767 and FCN 2322619900241.
