Chattanooga, Tennessee, Amber Alert: 23-Month-Old Octavia Shaw Allegedly Kidnapped By Matias Martinez

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has issued a statewide Amber Alert on Thursday, on behalf of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office (HCSO), for a 23-month-old African-American girl.

The missing child was identified as Octavia Shaw, who was last seen at a traffic stop on Boy Scout Road, Chattanooga. During the traffic stop, the sheriff’s deputies discovered a woman in a vehicle with open warrants against her. She was accompanied by her granddaughter, Shaw, and another man, who was later identified as Matias Martinez, 37.

As the woman was being questioned by the deputies, Martinez was allowed to wait with the infant in a shade nearby, due to the heat. At some point during the interrogation, the law enforcement agents discovered that the man had fled on foot along with the child. Investigators were searching the area from where Shaw went missing.

Shaw is described as two feet tall, weighing approximately 30 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a blue dress. The suspect is a white male with black hair and brown eyes. He is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds, and has a valid Massachusetts’s driver’s license. An active warrant for kidnapping was out for Martinez.

The relationship between the child and the suspect was not revealed. It was not immediately clear when the two went missing. "The HCSO would like to reassure our community that we, along with our LE (law enforcement) partners, are doing everything in our power to locate this young child and return her to her family,” HCSO Public Relations Manager Matt Lea said in a press conference Thursday.

Anyone with any information on either the missing child or the suspected abductor was requested to contact the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND or the HCSO at 423-622-0022.