A 12-year-old Alexandria girl who vanished from the city's West End on Monday afternoon was found safe that same evening, according to the Alexandria Police Department. Aaliyah Watts was last seen around 3:30 p.m. in the 300 block of South Reynolds Street, and she turned up roughly two hours after police issued a public alert asking for help finding her.
Police posted an update at 8:47 p.m. saying Watts had been located, as reported by The Alexandria Brief. Officers thanked the community members who had shared the department's alert, but they did not disclose where or how she was found. The department had classified Watts as a critical missing youth as it worked to track her down.
A Chaotic Backdrop in the West End
Watts disappeared on an afternoon already disrupted by a separate neighborhood emergency. A Dominion Energy outage knocked out power to 565 customers in Alexandria's West End that same day and darkened major traffic signals until service was restored around 8:36 p.m., according to The Alexandria Brief. The outage unfolded in the same general area and timeframe where officers were searching for the missing girl, though the two incidents are not described as connected beyond their shared timing and location. The 300 block of South Reynolds Street sits in a high-density residential pocket of multi-family condominiums and public housing redeveloped by the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority, per background from Virginia Housing Development.
Why Police Moved So Quickly
The speed of the department's response traces back to state law. Virginia Code § 15.2-1718 bars police departments from enforcing any waiting period before accepting a missing child report and requires officers to enter descriptive data into state and federal databases within two hours of receiving one, according to Virginia Law. That statute helps explain why Alexandria police moved to classify Watts as a critical missing youth and push out public alerts so rapidly after she was reported gone.
Federal law adds another layer of urgency. Under Suzanne's Law, local agencies nationwide must immediately log reports of missing people under 21 into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database without any waiting period, per FBI.gov. For cases that don't meet AMBER Alert criteria but still pose a credible safety threat, Virginia also maintains the Critical Operation for a Disappeared Child Initiative, known as a CODI Alert, which allows regional or statewide public notifications for missing youth under 18, according to Virginia State Police.
A Pattern of Rapid Public Outreach
Alexandria police have leaned on similar tactics before. The department used critical missing designations and community camera requests during a March 2026 search for an 80-year-old Del Ray resident that involved regional air support and bloodhound units, according to the City of Alexandria. Virginia's reporting system is also built to centralize cases quickly — the Commonwealth automatically forwards all local missing child reports directly to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to Virginia State Police reporting policies relayed by WVEC 13News Now, making it one of the more proactive states in tracking missing youth.
That centralization helps put Monday's case in context. Virginia State Police recorded 3,274 missing child reports statewide between January and mid-August 2025, roughly 95 to 98 cases a week across the Commonwealth. Nationally, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported supporting 32,167 missing child cases in 2025 and resolving 90% of them, with endangered runaways accounting for 92% of all reported missing youth. A separate May 2026 analysis of Virginia data found that Black youth accounted for nearly 6 in 10, or 58%, of reported missing children cases across the Commonwealth between mid-May 2025 and mid-May 2026, according to WTKR News 3.
Watts's case is the latest in a string of recent Northern Virginia disappearances that Hoodline has tracked, including a Howard senior's Metro disappearance and an Arlington teen whose case prompted a CODI Alert in August. Alexandria police have not released further details on where or how Watts was found.
