D’Andre Josef Kameron McElrath was a 13-year-old Black male who was last seen in Dayton, Ohio, on July 7, 2016. At the time, he was described as 5 feet 5 inches tall and about 195 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. The available missing-person listing classified him as an endangered runaway and stated that authorities believed he may have left of his own accord and might have remained in the local area. Even with that classification, the facts made public were sparse: there was no detailed timeline released about where in Dayton he was last seen, what he may have been wearing, who last saw him, or what immediate steps followed after he disappeared. What remained was the essential and painful outline of a young teenager’s absence: a boy barely into adolescence, missing from his community, with his family and authorities left to rely on limited public details and the hope that someone might know where he was.
The publicly available case information emphasized how little was known. The Charley Project’s profile, which cited the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as source information, noted only that D’Andre disappeared from Dayton on July 7, 2016, that authorities believed he left voluntarily, that he could still be nearby, and that “few details” were available in the case. The listed investigating agency was the Dayton Police Department, with the public contact number 937-333-2677. In Ohio, missing-child information in the Attorney General’s missing-person database is derived from the Law Enforcement Automated Data System through the investigating agency’s reporting, and the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation maintains missing children and adult databases as a central resource for families, law enforcement, and the public.
Because the online missing-person profile did not publish a fuller narrative, the case appears to have remained publicly quiet rather than widely documented. There were no broadly reported circumstances explaining why D’Andre may have left, whether he had a known destination, whether he had friends or relatives he might have contacted, or whether any confirmed sightings followed. That absence of detail can make a case feel deceptively simple, but a missing child’s case is never simple for those who love him. A runaway classification does not remove the vulnerability of a 13-year-old child, and it does not lessen the urgency of ensuring that he is safe. For families, the uncertainty itself becomes part of the story: waiting for a call, searching for signs, trying to interpret limited information, and hoping that a young person who disappeared from familiar streets might still be reachable.
Later online public records appear to show a D’Andre McElrath with the same date of birth, May 20, 2003, listed by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction as an incarcerated adult male in Ohio, with offender number A818412, admitted on September 1, 2023. A separate public pen-pal profile also lists Dandre McElrath, age 22, incarcerated in Ohio, and references the same May 20 birthdate. These later records indicate that a person matching the missing-child profile’s name, birthdate, sex, and race was alive as an adult; however, the missing-person sources available online do not provide a clear case-resolution notice or an exact date when he was located, so the precise date and circumstances of any resolution are unknown from the public information reviewed.
Taken as a whole, the public record tells a brief but meaningful story: D’Andre Josef Kameron McElrath was a 13-year-old boy reported missing from Dayton, Ohio, on July 7, 2016; authorities believed he may have left voluntarily and possibly stayed in the local area; the case was listed with only minimal identifying and investigative details; and later public Ohio records appear to show a matching D’Andre McElrath alive as an adult, though the available missing-person sources do not state when or how the missing-child matter was resolved. The overview of the case is therefore one of a young Dayton teenager whose disappearance was publicly documented with very few details, whose safety would have been the central concern from the first day, and whose later apparent public-record match suggests survival while leaving the exact path from missing child to located adult unclear.
Last Seen: Jul 7, 2016
