By Kenny Mitchell Publisher Thanks to information provided in an Amber Alert and the quick thinking of a Hooks police officer, a young lady from Brownwood, Texas has been reunited with her family.
In the early afternoon hours of Wednesday, July 9, a statewide Amber Alert was issued for a female teenager from Brownwood, Texas. The Amber Alert gave the description of the alleged suspect, the teen girl, and the vehicle that the two were alleged to be in.
Less than two hours after the alert was broadcast statewide, Hooks Police Department Officer Zachary Baker located the vehicle traveling eastbound on Interstate 30 and conducted a traffic stop near Mile Marker 209 in Hooks at which point the suspect was taken into custody and the teen girl was rescued.
The suspect has been identified as Cody Louis Kille, 28, from Annville, Pennsylvania. Hooks Police took Kille into custody charged with kidnapping and unlawfully carrying a weapon. Kille has been booked into the Bi-State Justice Center. Additional charges with the Brownwood Police Department are pending.
The 15-year-old female of Brownwood, Texas, was held by local Child Protective Services until her parents could make the close to six-hour drive from Brownwood. The parents visited the Hooks Police Depart-ment on Thursday to thank the officers for their actions.
Hooks Police Chief Johnny Millwood spoke to the Tribune following the incident to point out the importance of paying attention to the statewide Amber Alerts and how important it was in rescuing the teenage girl involved in their stop.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, The Amber Alert System got its start and name following community reaction to the brutal kidnapping and death of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman of Arlington, Texas in 1996. In 2002, Governor Rick Perry created the state’s AMBER Alert network per Executive Order RP-16, later codified through legislation in 2003.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) was given legislative authority to coordinate the state’s AMBER Alert network, which served as the role model for the subsequent Silver, Blue, and Endangered Missing Persons alert programs.
AMBER Alerts inform the public of serious child abductions, in an effort to promote tips and leads to law enforcement.
In 2023, Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation authorizing local area activation of the AMBER Alert system in certain circumstances, in honor of seven- year-old Athena Strand, who was kidnapped and murdered in Wise County in 2022.
Under this legislation, a request for local area alert activation may be made by a law enforcement agency that knows a child is missing but has not verified the Amber Alert criteria, and if the chief law enforcement officer of the local law enforcement agency believes that activation of the alert system is warranted.
