Family urges alert system for special needs people after non-verbal son spent 6 days lost in train station

Rashawn Williams’ father said his 31-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, didn’t qualify for Silver and Amber alerts due to his age.

A Black Maryland family is advocating for an alert notification for individuals with special needs after a missing non-verbal man spent nearly a week locked in a train station.

According to Fox 5 Washington DC, law enforcement found Rashawn Williams, 31, who has Down syndrome, safe in a locked Metro station corridor on Thursday. Six days prior, he got separated from his caregivers and went missing from a Silver Spring hotel where he and his aides were residing after a fire damaged their group home.

Williams’ father, Jimmy Hall, wants the state of Maryland to explore introducing a third alert system for people with special needs who are critically missing and non-verbal, noting that his son didn’t qualify for Silver and Amber alerts due to his age.

“Please reconsider and try to come up with a different type of system to where there is a notification for individuals in situations like this because we were fortunate enough to receive Rashawn back safe and sound,” Hall said. “The next time, it could be much, much worse. And an alert could be helpful to that family of individuals that’s lost.”

After nearly a week of searching, Williams was seen on Metro surveillance photos walking through the Glenmont station. On Thursday, an officer searching for Williams at the station checked an emergency exit, finding him safe. 

Williams reportedly entered the emergency escape corridor and moved down the hallway into a small office when a door he entered shut behind him.

Margot Rhondeau of the National Down Syndrome Society said Williams likely understood everything happening around him and what people were saying, but being non-verbal affected his ability to ask for help.

“And what’s really, really heartbreaking is that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the feelings of ‘I need help,'” Rhondeau added, Fox 5 reported. “It doesn’t mean he’s not scared. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want help. It just means he verbally can’t say, ‘I need help.’ And if he tried to communicate that in ways to people, they might not have understood what he was saying.”

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