Democratic Senator Charles Schumer will today formally introduce legislation that would allow law enforcement agencies to track children with autism using GPS devices. Schumer dubbed the proposed legislation “Avonte’s law,” named for Avonte Oquendo. Oquendo, who suffered from severe autism, disappeared from his school in Queens last October. His remains were found in the East River earlier this month.
The day after the funeral of Avonte Oquendo, the boy with autism whose remains were found this month after he disappeared at age 14 from his school in October, his mother and grandmother stood with Senator Charles E. Schumer as he announced a proposal for a new law. Called “Avonte’s law,” it would finance a program to provide optional electronic tracking devices to be worn by children with autism. “Avonte’s running away was not an isolated incident,” Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said at a news conference on Sunday morning in his office on the East Side of Manhattan. “This is a high-tech solution to an age-old problem.”