Winner of Missing Children's Poster Contest Honored

Topeka - Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) recently honored the 2017 winner of the Kansas Missing Children’s Poster Contest, a contest for Kansas 5th graders which encourages child safety and creates awareness for children who remain missing.

The annual national poster contest is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The winner of this year’s poster contest was 11-year-old Kamryn Tuttle of Lansing, who attends the Kansas School for the Deaf in Olathe. Kamryn’s poster represented the state of Kansas in the national poster contest.

Kamryn’s parents, teacher, siblings and grandparents recently attended a day of events honoring Kamryn’s selection as the 2017 contest winner. Kamryn, her family and teacher, met Attorney General Derek Schmidt, KBI Director Kirk Thompson, planted forget-me-not flowers for missing children at the KBI, and learned about KBI investigations through fingerprinting and crime scene simulations.

The group also visited the Capitol for a ceremony where Governor Brownback proclaimed May 25, 2017 as Kansas Missing Children’s Day. Both the contest and the observation of Missing Children’s Day are intended to raise awareness of the risks of child abduction and provide valuable information to students to encourage their safety.

Each year in Kansas an average of 4,325 children are reported missing to the KBI’s Missing Persons Clearinghouse, and last year over 465,000 children were declared missing by law enforcement nationally. The majority of those reports are for runaways, which are known to frequently reoccur. Fortunately, most missing children’s cases are resolved a short time after being reported.

The Governor’s proclamation of Missing Children’s Day calls on “all Kansans to join together in remembering the many children who remain missing, and to not waver in efforts to reunite them with their families. The citizens of the State of Kansas are urged to stand vigilant when a child goes missing and remain committed to reducing the tragic incidents of missing children.”