SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - The Savannah Police Department (SPD) has confirmed that a missing 3-year-old has been found safe after being illegally taken from a supervised visitation.

Leilani Elliott, 3, was reported missing Thursday morning after a visit with her biological mother, Jessy Elliott, 32, who has since been arrested.

SPD began asking for the public’s help to locate Leilani Elliott around 11:45 a.m. Thursday.

She was later reported safe Friday morning at approximately 9:36 a.m.

Officers following this case are describing this a “custody issue”.

AMBER Alert Delay

An amber alert was issued just after 4:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon— but AMBER alerts didn’t hit people’s phones until around 8:30 p.m.

What caused this delay?

According to SPD, they had most of the information required to put out an Amber Alert pretty quickly after the child was taken- but they didn’t have a tag number on the car.

Sgt. Aaron Washington, SPD, says having the tag number is required to send out an AMBER Alert, which could’ve been why it wasn’t sent to people’s phones much later in the day.

But even without the tag number, SPD knew what kind of car it was, and a possible direction of Jessy Elliott’s travel.

With that information, Washington said it was important to push it out on social media, even though an official AMBER Alert wasn’t issued until the afternoon.

“We were able to still get that information out and put it across for the public to see it and know about it, so they’re looking for the vehicle but don’t quite have a tag,” said Washington. “They had her face, they have a suspect, so they can be sitting at a light and look over and see her, see the child, so they can get on the phone and say, ‘Hey, I see her, I see the child, we’re at such and such location.’ We were hoping that would happen.”

Washington said the tag number issue accounted for the delay between 11:45 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. but WTOC hasn’t been able to get answers about why phones weren’t going off until hours later.

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