A Police Mistake Causes a Mother To Search Years for Dead Son

La Mont D. Dottin was a freshman at Queens College when he disappeared Oct. 18, 1995 after leaving his grandmother's Hollis home to mail a package to his mother, Arnita Fowler, in California.

Ms. Fowler returned immediately to New York and tried in vain to report her son missing but, due to police rules at the time, she was not able to do so. It wasn't until November 13, 1995, that La Mont had been missing long enough for police to consider him a missing person.

Forced to become a one woman search team for four years, Ms. Fowler discovered that her son's body was found six days after she reported him missing in 1995 and laid unidentified in a city morgue, until February 1996 at which time La Mont was buried in a pauper's grave in Potter's Field on Hart Island. The parents of La Mont was never told of this until September 1999, four years later.

A year after giving their son, La Mont, a proper burial, the family established "The La Mont Dottin Foundation" to serve as an information clearing house committed to assist other families in their search for missing loved ones. The goal of the foundation is to ensure that such families do not endure the same painful journey and to push for legislation reform of the Missing Persons Unit.

The foundation will also provide scholarships to deserving high school seniors majoring in technology and has submitted a proposal to establish a community base technology training cernter that will allow LaMont's passion for computers to be realized through lives of youth with the same passion.