CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When 18-year-old Kelsey Smith went missing in 2007, police tried to track her phone's location.
While they were dealing with legal roadblocks trying to get that information from the phone company, Kelsey was raped and murdered.
She was in a Kansas City Target one moment. The next, she was gone.
"You see it on crime shows and everything on TV about pinging a phone," Kelsey's father, Greg, said.
Her parents assumed police would do just that. But it turned out to not be so simple.
Police had to get a warrant, and even then the cell phone company didn’t hand the information over right away.
"They kept saying we can’t do that so there was a lot of confusion and a lot of irritation," Greg said.
It took four days for police to obtain Kelsey’s phone location, which led them straight to her body.
"She had been kidnapped, sodomized, raped, and murdered," her mother, Missey, said.
That was in 2007.
Police eventually found and arrested her killer, who was sentenced to life in prison. But for Kelsey’s parents, that wasn’t enough.
"This is one of those things where someone would dearly love to be able to pick up the phone to call 911 and can’t," Greg said.
Missey and Greg Smith began advocating for the Kelsey Smith Act which would require cell phone companies to release cell phone locations to police in cases where death or serious injury is imminent.
“People assume law enforcement can do this," Greg said. "I mean all the crime dramas make it seem like all that stuff happens and it’s not the case.”
The Kelsey Smith Act has been passed in 24 states and was just filed in North Carolina Thursday.
“This could actually be the halfway point; North Carolina could be the 25th state so that’s exciting," Greg said.
However, the bill has skeptics. It would essentially allow police to force phone companies to hand over customers’ locations – without a warrant.
Some worried that could lead to abuse of power and fourth amendment violations. To the skeptics, Kelsey's mom had this response.
“I would say to anyone that skeptical if this was your child, would you want every means possible to find them?” she said.