A Silver Alert is active for Kenneth Howell, a 69-year-old Black man last seen in Memphis on Tuesday, August 19. Howell has a medical condition that may impair his ability to return home safely without assistance, according to officials, and he was last seen wearing a multi-colored hat, black shirt, blue jeans and blue shoes.
The Memphis Police Department issued the Silver Alert Tuesday, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which has since added Howell to its active missing adult repository. Howell is described as 6 feet tall and 125 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. His case has been assigned NCIC number M989121008, the identifier used to make his disappearance visible to law enforcement agencies nationwide, as Hoodline previously reported in coverage of a Germantown grandmother's case.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Memphis Police Department at 901-545-2677 or the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND. The TBI Find mobile app also offers details on the state's Silver Alert program and additional resources for families searching for a missing loved one.
How Tennessee's Silver Alert System Works
Tennessee's Silver Alert program applies to missing adults who are 60 or older, living with documented dementia, or 18 or older with an intellectual, developmental, or physical disability that leaves them in danger and unable to return home safely, under Tennessee Code § 38-6-121, according to Justia Law. The law reflects statutory findings that the initial hours following the disappearance of a cognitively or physically impaired adult are the most critical for preventing harm, disorientation, or environmental exposure.
Local police departments must first enter a missing vulnerable adult into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database before requesting that the TBI activate a statewide Silver Alert, a process outlined in Hoodline's report on a missing Clarksville man earlier this month. The Memphis Police Department manages missing person reports through investigative units that interface directly with the TBI to trigger those alerts, per the Layla's Hope Resource Manual.
A Program With a Strong Track Record
Tennessee overhauled its missing adult notification framework under Public Chapter 350, enacted in May 2021, replacing the former decentralized Care Alert program with a centralized Silver Alert system managed directly by the TBI. The agency's Missing Persons Clearinghouse, established in 1993 under the Criminal Intelligence Unit at the Tennessee Fusion Center, serves as the statewide repository for missing child and vulnerable adult cases.
The state's Silver Alert program has located more than 500 missing individuals and maintained a recovery success rate exceeding 90 percent since its creation, the TBI and Alzheimer's Tennessee reported in February. In January 2025, the TBI also launched TBI Find, a mobile app for Apple and Android devices that pushes real-time Silver Alert updates and lets families build digital CareKits containing medical information and photos.
Memphis and Shelby County law enforcement also lean on roughly 600 Flock Safety license plate reader cameras that can automatically alert officers if a vehicle tied to an active Silver Alert is detected, with pings routing directly to the city's Real Time Crime Center. Howell's case is the latest in a string of Silver Alerts issued in the Memphis area in recent months, following similar cases involving Eugene Sturdivant and Milta Hall.
