A statewide Amber Alert was activated Wednesday night for 9-month-old Nylah Austin, nearly 48 hours after she was last seen Monday with 29-year-old Kennisha Austin in the Westlake district of Los Angeles. Nylah is described as 18 inches tall and 15 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.
The alert was issued by the California Highway Patrol on behalf of the Torrance Police Department, according to ABC7 Los Angeles. The nature of the relationship between Nylah and Kennisha Austin has not been publicly disclosed.
The nearly two-day gap between the child’s last known sighting and the public alert reflects how narrowly California law restricts when these emergency broadcasts can be triggered. Under Government Code Section 8594, an Amber Alert can only be activated once four conditions are confirmed: that an abduction occurred, that the victim is 17 or younger or has a proven mental or physical disability, that there is evidence of imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death, and that enough descriptive information exists to help the public assist in recovery, per the California Highway Patrol.
Who Decides When to Sound the Alarm
The local investigating law-enforcement agency ultimately determines whether the criteria are met. CHP’s Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center, a unit based at CHP headquarters in Sacramento and staffed around the clock by uniformed officers, coordinates statewide alerts on behalf of municipal departments like Torrance’s, the CHP notes. Within Los Angeles County, agencies should contact the Sheriff’s Department about county Amber Alert EAS activation procedures, according to documentation from CalAlerts.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Nylah Austin or Kennisha Austin is urged to call 911. The Amber Alert system is designed to bring together law enforcement agencies and media broadcasters so the public can help when a child is abducted, and the broader program leans on technology and inter-agency partnerships to locate missing children and support their safe recovery.
A System Built on Strict Thresholds and Decades of Use
Amber Alerts are just one tool in a wider state framework. California also coordinates Blue, Silver, Feather, and Ebony Alerts, along with Endangered Missing Advisories, but reserves the Amber Alert specifically for the most severe child abduction cases involving imminent peril, the CHP explains. In 2018, California became the first state in the nation to embed clickable links in Wireless Emergency Alerts sent to mobile phones, letting recipients pull up photos and descriptions of missing children and suspects directly from a text message.
Since the CHP became California’s statewide Amber Alert coordinator in July 2002, the network has helped safely locate nearly 400 abducted or at-risk individuals, according to SierraDailyNews.com. Nationally, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted with 32,167 missing child cases in 2025 and reported a 90 percent recovery rate, with runaway incidents making up the overwhelming majority of those reports, per MissingKids.org. The national alert system itself traces back to 1996, created in response to the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas — the case that gave the program its name, America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.
Late Wednesday, Torrance police said Nylah had been located and was in Los Angeles Police Department custody.
