| | September 16, 2023, marked four years since 5-year-old Dulce Alavez went missing while playing with her younger brother in a Bridgeton City park located in New Jersey. In the search for missing children, the single most important tool to find and recover a child is their picture. Sadly, when a child has been missing for a long time, initial photos taken from before the child went missing are no longer as helpful. That’s when investigators, such as in Dulce’s case, will reach out to NCMEC to request assistance by creating an image known as an age progression to reflect what the child might look like today. Age progressions are instrumental in aiding law enforcement in many missing and unidentified cases. NCMEC generates age progression images every two years until a missing child turns 18, then every five years because their features do not change as much once they reach adulthood. A forensic artist at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children created the age-progressed image below of Dulce, in hopes that someone will see it and call NCMEC with a lead or any information. “When starting an age progression, the first thing I do is study the images of the missing child, in this case, Dulce,” said Christi Andrews, NCMEC's forensic artist. “I want to understand the structure of her face as much as possible. I was lucky enough to get images of her biological family in addition to images of Dulce, which gave me clues as to how the family members grow and age over time.” If you have any information about the disappearance of Dulce Alavez, call NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678), the Bridgeton City Police Department at 856-451-0033, or your local FBI field office at 800-225-5324. We never give up hope that we can bring her home. View the full story online. |
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