A four-county Amber Alert for a missing 4-year-old South Los Angeles girl ended Wednesday night when police located her safe, roughly nine hours after she was last seen near West Manchester Avenue and South Hoover Street. Selah Tillary had been last seen around 11 a.m. Wednesday with 23-year-old Donnel Paige, and the alert was officially canceled around 8:15 p.m.
The California Highway Patrol activated the alert on behalf of the Los Angeles Police Department, according to a bulletin shared by CHP - Alerts, covering Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange counties. As reported by CBS News, LAPD officers disclosed that Paige is the boyfriend of Tillary's mother, and police did not believe he was armed or that the child was in imminent danger.
Tillary was described as 3 feet tall and 45 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, last wearing a white tank top, blue sweatpants, and blue checkered shoes, per the CHP bulletin. Paige stands 5 feet 9 inches and weighs 155 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and was believed to be traveling on foot rather than in a vehicle. Authorities did not immediately release public details about exactly where Tillary was found or whether Paige was taken into custody at the time the alert was lifted, the CBS News report notes.
Why the Alert Went Out Across Four Counties
The disappearance was reported near West Manchester Avenue and South Hoover Street, a stretch of South Los Angeles that falls within LAPD's South Bureau operational area near the Vermont Knolls neighborhood, according to LAPD. Statewide missing-person alerts like this one are coordinated through the California Highway Patrol's Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center, a 24/7 Sacramento facility that evaluates alert requests from local agencies and oversees six separate statewide alert programs.
Under California Government Code Section 8594, law enforcement can only request an Amber Alert activation once it has confirmed an abduction occurred and that a child 17 or younger faces imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death, per guidance published by CalAlerts.org. That standard sits in some tension with what LAPD officers later disclosed about the case — that they did not believe Paige was armed or that Tillary was in immediate danger — even as the alert had already gone out across four counties.
Because Paige was believed to be on foot rather than in a car, CHP could not activate the electronic freeway Changeable Message Signs that typically accompany Amber Alerts, since those displays only trigger when investigators have specific suspect vehicle information such as a license plate. California's Amber Alert system itself traces back to Assembly Bill 415 in 2002, which built a statewide notification framework modeled on emergency broadcast protocols created after the 1996 abduction of Amber Hagerman in Texas.
A Selective Tool Among Missing Child Reports
Amber Alerts remain a relatively rare response even within the broader universe of missing child cases. Research cited by The Walrus found that Amber Alerts are issued for roughly 1 out of every 1,000 missing children reports filed nationwide, reflecting the strict legal thresholds agencies must clear before broadcasting a regional alarm.
The Tillary case follows a string of recent Southern California alert activations. Just two days earlier, LAPD and CHP issued an Echo Park missing-person advisory for an at-risk 58-year-old man last seen on foot. In May, the same two agencies issued an Amber Alert for 4-year-old Daleza Fregoso after an alleged abduction near Crenshaw, though that case involved a suspect fleeing in a vehicle rather than on foot, triggering alerts across Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties.
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