Oklahoma AMBER Alert seeks 4-year-old boy and names his father; the alert does not mention Cooke County

Oklahoma's AMBER Alert dated Wednesday, Oct. 14, seeks a 4-year-old boy, Andres "Harry" Furley, and tells anyone with information about his whereabouts to call 911. The alert does not mention Cooke County.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol activated the alert on behalf of Norman Police. It identifies the boy's father as Caleb Furley, 25, and says he missed an exchange with the child's mother. According to the alert, he was wanted on a parental-kidnapping warrant. It describes the vehicle as a silver 2012 Dodge Ram quad-cab pickup with Oklahoma plate RMR004.

An earlier Endangered Missing Advisory, dated Oct. 13, says the boy was last seen with his father in Norman at about 7 p.m. on Oct. 11. The advisory says Norman Police received the missing-person report on Oct. 12.

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety treats the two notices as separate tools. An advisory covers an endangered child whose case does not meet AMBER criteria. An AMBER Alert requires a reasonable belief of abduction, imminent danger of serious injury or death, enough descriptive information and an entry in the national NCIC database, the department says. The alert carries a date but no publication time.

The Justice Department describes a process for carrying an alert across state lines. The coordinator in the originating state contacts the coordinator in the state where the child is believed to be and asks for an activation there. That guidance does not establish that Texas activated an alert in this case.

Texas DPS says it can send qualifying alerts to a selected area or statewide, and only law enforcement or another authorized entity can request activation of its network. The agency also says House Bill 3556, effective June 13, 2023, lets the chief of an investigating agency request a local-area AMBER Alert before every standard criterion is verified, if the chief believes one is warranted. Coverage under that provision includes a 100-mile radius and adjacent counties.

Texas DPS says the change was informally called the Athena Alert law, after 7-year-old Athena Strand, who was kidnapped and murdered in Wise County in 2022. The agency says the legislation kept the AMBER Alert name rather than creating a separate category.

The Justice Department says the AMBER system began in Dallas-Fort Worth in 1996, through cooperation between broadcasters and police after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington. The department reports that, through Dec. 31, 2025, activations had helped recover 1,312 children, at least 252 of them rescued because of Wireless Emergency Alerts. Those are cumulative national figures and do not predict the outcome of any single case.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says AMBER Alerts usually resolve within hours, but some children remain missing after an alert. The center's continuing cases include children missing from Texas.

_Editor's note: Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law._