What Is The Ashanti Alert?
Ashanti Billie’s story created a federal alert system. Most people still haven’t heard of it.
She disappeared in the middle of an ordinary workday.
A teenager showed up for her shift at a sandwich shop on a military base in Virginia Beach. She clocked in and was seen. Then she was gone. Not hours later. Not days later. Gone before her shift even ended.
Her name was Ashanti Billie. She was 19 years old.
There wasn’t an alert sent to the public. You didn’t find the local community’s phones buzzing. There weren’t any highway signs lit up. Law enforcement searched, but the broader system that people assume exists for moments like this never activated. Ashanti was too old for an AMBER Alert. She didn’t qualify for a Silver Alert. She didn’t have a diagnosis, no age-based protection, or a category that made her disappearance “urgent enough” in the eyes of protocol.
Nearly two weeks later, her body was found more than 300 miles away in North Carolina. A co-worker would later be charged with her kidnapping and murder.
What failed Ashanti wasn’t a lack of concern from her family or of danger. It was the absence of a system designed to respond when a young adult goes missing under clearly alarming circumstances.
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What is the Ashanti Alert?
After Ashanti Billie’s death, her parents began to advocate for a new kind of alert that could have been triggered the moment she was reported missing, not weeks later, after it was too late.
In 2018, their efforts helped pass the Ashanti Alert Act, a federal law named in her memory. It was designed to fill the space between AMBER Alerts, which cover children, and Silver Alerts, which focus on seniors or those with cognitive conditions. The Ashanti Alert covers missing or endangered adults between the ages of 18 and 64, especially those who are believed to be in serious danger, but don’t meet the strict criteria of other systems.
The alert works much like the others. If activated, it can send out details through the media, highway signs, and wireless emergency systems. It’s a way to quickly mobilize the public and give families a fighting chance.
However, unlike AMBER or Silver Alerts, the Ashanti Alert isn’t active in every state. The law allows for it, but it doesn’t require it. This means whether or not that alert goes out depends entirely on where you live.
How It Works (And Where It Works)
Under the federal law, states were given the authority to create Ashanti Alert systems, but they weren’t required to. That means in some places, the alert exists only in name. In others, it’s been adopted with little public awareness. A few states have built their own systems under different names, sometimes with different rules. There’s no national standard.
In Virginia, where Ashanti Billie went missing, the alert is active and integrated with the state’s emergency response system. If an adult goes missing and law enforcement believes they are in danger, and there’s enough information to share with the public, such as a vehicle description or last known location, they can issue an Ashanti Alert.
Still, in other states, the process is unclear. Some use “endangered missing advisories” that serve a similar function, but lack the structure and visibility of a named alert. Others don’t offer anything at all between AMBER and Silver. Even in states with the system in place, families often have to push hard to get the alert issued.
The reality is, the Ashanti Alert exists, but access to it is uneven. It depends on geography and discretion. Moreover, it relies on whether local agencies know about it or are willing to act.
Who Has to Go Missing to Matter?
By the time someone goes missing, the clock is already against them. So is perception. This is what the Ashanti Alert was built to interrupt.
It exists because adulthood doesn’t mean invincibility. Danger doesn’t disappear once you turn 18. Far too many families, especially Black families, have been told to wait, to calm down, to give it a few days, to file a report later. Those hours matter. That delay can be the difference between recovery and silence.
Ashanti Billie was a beloved college student. She was working two jobs. Her family knew something was wrong the moment she didn’t come home. Yet, she didn’t fit the system’s idea of what “at-risk” looked like.
With this alert, the hope was to build a pathway for action that didn’t require a perfect victim or a narrow checklist. A system that says if your adult loved one is in danger, we will act. We won’t ask if they had a clean record or the right tone of voice. We’ll listen.
Additional Information the Public Should Know
There is no national database for Ashanti Alerts. Unlike AMBER Alerts, which are widely tracked and reported, there isn’t a centralized count of Ashanti Alerts issued or outcomes. Some states (such as North Carolina) list current alerts and have criteria for activation, but past alerts aren’t systematically published in all jurisdictions.
Further, many people have received alerts on their phones without knowing what “Ashanti Alert” means, or they’ve never heard of it at all until prompted. That lack of public familiarity reduces its potential impact, because alerts only help if people know to pay attention and what they signify.
