An Amber Alert for a missing D.C. girl that was said to have been sent out along the east coast was only distributed within the District, police chief Cathy Lanier said.
Relisha Rudd, 8, was reported missing March 19 and an Amber Alert was sent out the next day.
Shortly after her disappearance, Maryland and Virginia officials said they were not contacted by D.C. to spread Relisha's Amber Alert within their states. D.C.'s Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Paul Quander disagreed, and re-emphasized District officials had not done anything wrong.
"[Maryland and Virginia] did receive [the Amber Alert]," Quander said March 26. "We verified that ... I think it's an internal issue for other states."
During an appearance on WTOP-103.5 FM Wednesday, Chief Lanier said the alert was in fact not sent out to neighboring states.
"We did not extend the Amber Alert to another jurisdiction because we have to have some specific information -- one, that we have an abduction -- we didn't have that. We really didn't have the criteria to issue [an Amber Alert] in D.C. We just had a bad feeling," Lanier said.
"It was confused by the news media," she added.
Lanier said the confusion is a matter of semantics and that nobody meant to mislead the public.
"I know exactly why [Quander] said it," Lanier said. "The Homeland Security Agency produced a log saying what we pushed out was a notification. We had an Amber Alert, but [it wasn't] asking them to issue one [in their states]."
She added that by sharing the Amber Alert with other jurisdictions, they did get some tips from out of state.
Relisha was believed to have been in the company of 51-year-old Kahlil Tatum, who was found dead by apparent suicide last week. The search for Relisha continues and Lanier said the department received about five tips a day from the public regarding her case.
