A 2-year-old boy vanished from a South Los Angeles intersection Thursday, prompting an Amber Alert as police say the child is missing and believed to be in imminent danger. Jax Robottom was last seen around 11:30 a.m. at Figueroa Street and Slauson Avenue with 33-year-old Marcus Clayton, and investigators have not yet said what, if any, relationship exists between the two.
The California Highway Patrol issued the alert on behalf of the Los Angeles Police Department, according to KTLA. Jax is described as roughly 3 feet tall and 30 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a blue shirt. Clayton is described as 5 feet 11 inches tall and 165 pounds, also with black hair and brown eyes. Anyone who spots either of them is asked to call 911 immediately.
Authorities said they did not yet know whether Clayton and Jax left the Figueroa and Slauson area on foot or in a vehicle, according to MyNewsLA. That gap in information is also why officials provided no vehicle details in connection with the case, per KTLA's report. It matters for how the search unfolds: state guidelines reserve the electronic message boards posted above California freeways for cases where investigators can confirm a vehicle description or license plate, so those overhead signs could not immediately display information about this search.
Investigators Still Working to Determine Clayton's Connection to Jax
The uncertainty over Clayton's relationship to Jax is one of the central open questions in the case. Police were still working to establish whether the situation involved a custodial dispute between family members or an abduction by someone with no relation to the child, the same MyNewsLA report noted. That distinction carries real legal weight — under California law, the case could ultimately move forward as a straightforward abduction or as a parental deprivation of custody matter, depending on what investigators determine.
Those two scenarios draw very different criminal exposure. Child abduction by someone without legal custody rights is a wobbler offense that can carry up to four years in state prison, while a parent or guardian who wrongfully deprives another custodian of visitation or custody rights faces up to three years, according to Justia Law. No charges have been filed, since Clayton has not yet been located.
Why an Alert Went Out Before All the Facts Were Known
Getting an Amber Alert activated in California requires clearing a specific legal bar. Under Government Code Section 8594, local police must confirm that an abduction occurred, that the child is 17 or younger or disabled, and that the child faces imminent danger of serious injury or death before the CHP's statewide alert system can be triggered, per guidance from the California Department of State Hospitals. Once those thresholds are met, the request flows to the CHP's Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center in Sacramento, the command hub that evaluates and broadcasts Amber Alerts submitted by police departments statewide across television, radio, and digital channels.
That legal framework also explains why an alert can go out even before police know whether a suspect is related to the missing child. State guidance notes that most California Amber Alert cases ending in a child's death have involved a parent, guardian, or close family member, which is part of why the law allows alerts in family-abduction situations once imminent danger is established. California's Amber Alert system dates back to 2002, when Assembly Bill 415 created the statewide framework and named the CHP as its coordinator, modeled after the original alert system Texas built following the 1996 murder of Amber Hagerman.
A String of Recent South LA Alerts
The search is unfolding within the LAPD's 77th Street Division, part of the department's South Bureau, which covers the Figueroa and Slauson corridor and has handled a string of high-profile disappearances in recent months. Just a week earlier, on August 20, an Amber Alert covering multiple counties led to the safe recovery of 4-year-old Selah Tillary roughly nine hours after she went missing near West Manchester Avenue and South Hoover Street, as Hoodline reported at the time. That case followed others this year, including a pre-dawn alert in May for a 4-year-old girl who vanished near Crenshaw.
Nationally, the Amber Alert system has a track record of resolving these cases quickly. Department of Justice figures show 1,312 children have been recovered as a direct result of Amber Alert activations, including at least 252 rescued after Wireless Emergency Alerts pushed notifications directly to nearby cell phones, according to the Office of Justice Programs. For now, police have not said whether Jax Robottom and Marcus Clayton were spotted on foot or in a vehicle, and the search in South Los Angeles continues. Anyone with information is urged to call 911.
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