Missing Texas girl Audrii Cunningham found dead: What to know about missing children cases

It's one of the worst-case scenarios for a missing child: An 11-year-old girl is found dead and a man who was supposed to drop her off at a school bus is charged in her murder.

Audrii Cunningham's body was found Tuesday in the Trinity River, Polk County Sheriff Byron Lyons told reporters. Don Steven McDougal, 42, who Lyons said lives in a trailer on the family’s property, was held without bond on a capital murder charge in connection to her death, according to Polk County Jail records.

The tragic case in Texas, which prompted an AMBER Alert and national coverage, represents one of the rarest kinds of missing children cases. The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of children reported missing in the United States each year are found and very few are abducted by people other than family members or given an AMBER Alert.

And while each case is troubling, how much attention they receive from law enforcement, the media and the public can vary widely based on a number of factors. Among them are race, age and the circumstances of their disappearance, according to Gaetane Borders, president of Peas in Their Pods, which has advocated for missing children of color since 2007.

"When every child goes missing, it should be urgent for everyone to assist," said Borders. "But the reality is that it's far more difficult for children of color to get the same level of attention as Audrii or [Gabby] Petito and so forth and so on."

What happens when a child disappears?Racial disparities abound in efforts to find missing kids in America

How often do children go missing?

About 460,000 children go missing from the United States each year, according to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. There were more than 30,500 active missing persons records for children under the age of 18 in National Crime Information Center in December 2022.

In Texas, there were 3,144 children reported missing to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2022, the highest number of any state. Nearly 90% of those cases were resolved, according to NCMEC.

At least 46 other children across the country went missing in the week since Audrii's disappearance, including 3-year-old Elijah Vue in Wisconsin, 14-year-old Maxine Pontious in Texas, 17-year-old Christian Spencer in Massachusetts and 15-year-old Princess Huertas in North Carolina, according to NCMEC's database of missing posters.

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Abductions by nonfamily members are rare

Children who ran away and family abductions are the two most common cases reported to NCMEC. An abduction in which a child is taken by someone known to but not related to them or by a stranger, called a "nonfamily abduction," is the rarest type of missing children case, accounting for just 1% of such cases reported to NCMEC. 

Missing children are typically found

According to NCMEC, 98% of children reported missing are located within days. Of those who are not, most are Black.

"Although a lot of the kids are found, the numbers definitely are disturbing as to how many are still left unfound," Borders said.

NCMEC found thousands of children have been recovered after being missing for six months or longer. But the longer children are missing, the more likely they could be harmed. A 2006 study from the Washington state attorney general’s office and U.S. Department of Justice of nearly 800 cases of children who went missing and were later found dead determined the child was killed within three hours in 76% of cases and within a day in 88.5% of cases.    

Not all missing kids are treated the same

An AMBER Alert was issued after Audrii failed to get on the school bus last week, which only happens in a small fraction of missing children cases. Even when AMBER Alerts are used, it’s unclear how much they do to help bring children home safely, a USA TODAY analysis of the alerts found.

The AMBER alert was credited with helping in just a quarter of alert cases across the country over six months in 2022. The alerts worked best for white and Hispanic kids, helping in about 1 in 3 cases, compared with 1 in 7 involving Black children. 

In some cities and towns, police department policy can result in missing children as young as 10 and older like Audrii receiving less attention from law enforcement, USA TODAY found. Children who are classified as runaways, which advocates say happens more often to children of color, can also receive less attention from law enforcement.

Stories about missing children of color may also be less likely to get attention from reporters, advocates say, and members of the public on social media. Borders, of Peas in Their Pods, said when a case does receive national attention, it can be an opportunity for people to learn more about issues surrounding missing children.

"But the trend is after a while the conversation stops until the next case that pulls at heartstrings comes up again, which it will, and then the conversations will resume," she said. "It's about sustained conversation. It's about preventative conversations."

Contributing: Natalie Neysa Alund, Amaris Encinas, Gina Barton, Doug Caruso, Rachel Looker, Tami Abdollah, Ashley Luthern and Madison Scott, USA TODAY