A 12-year-old non-verbal boy with autism was found safe early Sunday morning after walking away from his West Columbus home, capping a tense overnight search that stretched roughly four hours before he was located unharmed. Zakariyya Jafar left his residence on Grimes Drive around 11 p.m. Saturday, and police tracked him down at approximately 3 a.m.
According to updates posted by the Columbus Division of Police, officers issued an Endangered Missing Child Alert at 1:45 a.m., roughly two and a half hours after Zakariyya was last seen near Trabue Road and McKinley Avenue. He was recovered unharmed about 75 minutes after that alert went out, according to the department's Facebook update. At the time he went missing, he was wearing a black shirt, black sweatpants, and blue and white Nike tennis shoes.
Missing child records maintained by the Ohio Attorney General's Office list Zakariyya as 4 feet 11 inches tall and 89 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and confirm he vanished from the Grimes Drive address in West Columbus, ZIP code 43204 — a residential street near Trabue Road in Franklin County. Police had asked anyone with information to call 614-645-4545 or dial 911, though by the time the alert had circulated widely, he had already been found.
Why Police Skipped an AMBER Alert
Ohio's Endangered Missing Child Alert exists for exactly this kind of case: a vulnerable minor at risk of serious harm whose disappearance does not meet the strict abduction requirements of an AMBER Alert. Per the Ohio Association of Broadcasters, these alerts do not trigger Emergency Alert System phone blasts the way AMBER Alerts do; instead, they spread through social media, law enforcement networks, and news outlets.
The mechanism dates back two decades. The Ohio Attorney General's Office established the Endangered Missing Child Alert system on May 25, 2005, according to the Ohio AMBER Alert Advisory Committee, specifically to close the gap for children missing under life-threatening circumstances that do not involve a confirmed kidnapping. Within the Columbus Division of Police, cases like this fall to the Missing Persons Unit, housed in the Family Crimes Section of the Special Investigations Bureau, according to the City of Columbus, which conducts follow-up when abduction is not suspected. Department data reported by BAMFI shows Columbus police have historically maintained a missing persons recovery rate of 96% or higher, reaching 99% in 2023.
Why Autism and Wandering Raise the Stakes
Cases involving non-verbal autistic children carry particular urgency for first responders. Research compiled by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the American Academy of Pediatrics finds that roughly 48% to 49% of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder attempt to wander or elope from safe supervision, a rate nearly four times higher than their non-autistic siblings. The same organization reports that accidental drowning accounted for 87% of missing autistic children and young adults recovered deceased in 2025, which is why national guidelines direct searchers to check nearby bodies of water immediately, according to the American Camp Association.
The area where Zakariyya was last seen, near Trabue Road and McKinley Avenue, borders the historic San Margherita neighborhood, a mixed-use corridor with residential homes, industrial sites, railroad lines, and proximity to the Scioto River, according to Wikipedia. Those features are exactly the kind of environmental hazards that raise risk during overnight searches for wandering children. Compounding the danger, more than one-third of autistic children who elope are non-verbal or rarely able to communicate their name, address, or phone number, according to the National Autism Association — meaning they often cannot ask bystanders for help even if found.
In this case, the outcome was the one families and investigators hope for: Zakariyya was found unharmed roughly four hours after he first walked away from home. No further details about the circumstances of his recovery have been released.
