A Mother’s Story:

Southeast Queens Foundation Fights
To Create Missing Persons Awareness

By Tara Thomas

When Arnita Fowler’s son, La Mont Dottin, disappeared in 1995 she did what most parents would do — she called the police.

But because her son was 21 years old, Fowler said the police refused to help her.

This left Fowler with the only alternative she had — to look for her missing son on her own.

After four years, she finally learned that her son was buried in an unmarked grave at Potter’s Field.

To prevent what happened to her never from happening to anyone else ever again, Fowler started the La Mont Dottin Foundation dedicated to creating missing persons awareness.

“It’s time elected officials recognize missing persons and don’t wait until it hits [their] front door,” she said.

On October 16, 1995, 21 year-old La Mont Dottin headed to the post office in St. Albans to send a package to his mother, Arnita Fowler, who was on active military duty in California. 

That was the last time anyone saw Dottin alive.

Six days later, his mother returned to New York to move back to Hollis.

When she learned her son was missing she called the police.

Unbeknownst to her, his body had already been found floating in the East Harlem River and soon after buried in Potter’s Field.

He would remain unidentified for four years. 

Why?

Arnita Fowler, accompanied by Mark McMillan (left), Michael Villeck (second from left) and Assemblyman Scarborough (right), places commemorative yellow ribbons side by side, symbolizing equal attention for missing adults and children. PRESS Photo By Tara Thomas

State law dictates that unless a missing person between the ages of 19 and 64 is deemed mentally incapacitated or a victim of foul play, official police missing person status is considered an “invasion of privacy.” 

Although a bill to help change that law has been pushed through the State Assembly, political infighting has held it up from being passed in the Senate.

If passed, the bill could assure that all families of missing loved ones are given the full cooperation and assistance of the City regardless of age, according to Fowler.

Fowler finally got a break in the case of her son’s disappearance in Sept. of 1999, when she met with police at One Police Plaza, who informed her that her son’s Death Certificate was found.

According to investigators, on Oct. 24, 1995, a body was pulled out from the East Harlem River.

Within days, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – using fingerprints and dental records — had identified the body as the final remains of Dottin.

“My son’s body was found six days after he disappeared, but since I was unable to declare him missing until Nov. 13, the police department did not receive information of the bodies found before that date.

If they were able to collect information after the 19th, like I wanted to, I would not have wasted four years looking for my son,” Fowler told the PRESS in an interview in 2000.

“The information was out there since Oct. 24 of 1995. The FBI had already identified my son and had placed him in the city’s morgue for the first four months that he was missing, from Oct. 1995 to Feb. 1996,” Fowler said, “but all the while the police department had refused to provide me with any information regarding my missing son or follow up on FBI reports because of their policy.”

On Feb. 13 1996, Dottin’s body was taken from New York City’s Medical Examiner’s Office and buried in a mass grave for unidentified persons, which is located on Harts Island — 16 miles away from City Island off the coast of the Bronx.

“My son shared a head stone with 150 different people for four years,” she explained. “I believe that not all these bodies are unidentified, but instead are unclaimed. Families are being denied vital information that can be used to find their loved ones in our city morgues and in Potter’s Field,” Fowler said.

The phenomenon of abducted and missing persons shows no signs of being eliminated – that’s why Fowler’s La Mont Dottin Foundation called a May 24 press conference on the steps of Queens Borough Hall.

With support from Assemblyman William Scarborough’s office, Mark McMillan, the Director of Constituent Services for the Queens Borough President and attorney Michael Villeck, Fowler organized the recent forum to help encourage the New York state legislature to consider passing an all-inclusive missing persons bill.

During the press conference, Fowler suggested that police receive sensitivity training conducted during morning roll calls and implementing missing persons departments in each precinct to allow more informed and focused communication between all involved parties. 

“Localizing may eliminate the load at One Police Plaza,” Fowler said. 

Assemblyman Scarborough said that there are times when the law’s current privacy policy simply holds “no weight.”

“[The United States] has a history of putting the public good ahead of discretion,” as with Jenna’s Law and the Rockefeller Drug Law.

I can “think of no good reason why [Dottin’s Senate bill] cannot become law,” Scarborough said.

Most recently, Chandra Levy’s case has shed light on the issue, particularly as it pertains to adults. 

While Fowler offered “condolences to [the Levys] on behalf of every missing person’s family [who also walks] in the unknowing absence of a loved one,” she and Scarborough both urged a public understanding that missing adults should not have to be dependent upon government connections or the indefinite costs required by long-term private investigations to receive attention. 

To the affected, the current law makes for desperate times, which in turn often call for desperate measures that “aren’t morally right,” said Fowler, citing the husband who added the previously disregarded name of his missing wife to the Sept. 11 missing roster as an example. 

Fowler closed imagining the interest that would arise if the ignored demographic, comprising the bulk of the nation’s citizenry, chose not to vote, pay those same taxes or otherwise revert to the protection of their childhood.

Fowler is planning a bus trip to Albany scheduled for Tuesday, June 25 to lobby for the bill’s passing in the Senate. 

Until then, she, like the near 2,500 unidentified resting in so-called pauper’s graves annually, will wait.