The 61-year-old wandered from his Deptford home yesterday worrying his 92-year-old mother Josephine Anderson to no end.
"I said, 'my boy's gone, he wandered off,'" Anderson said.
But today, nearly 24 hours after he disappeared, Josephine's son was found due in large part to a technology called Global Connect.
"It's like a reverse 911 system. We basically get telephone numbers from Verizon landlines and we put them in the system Global Connect," Larry Kennie of Gloucester County Emergency Response said.
To help find the missing man, staff at Gloucester County Emergency Response prerecorded a message with a detailed description of the 61-year-old. It was put into the Global Connect system and initially sent out to Deptford then Harrison and Mantua.
"Global Connect dials thousands and thousands of numbers, a prerecorded message giving residents of Deptford the information [saying] 'hey, we need your help,'" Kennie said.
10 miles from Benn-Bey's home, a woman who received one of those calls spotted him.
"He walked all night and they found him sitting on somebody's porch," Anderson said.
Benn-Bey was tired, but alright.
Global Connect is used by Gloucester County to inform residents about missing persons, but also traffic snarls and weather events and has proven to be a valuable tool.
"I think it's wonderful. I'm going to call them up and write them a letter and thank them," Anderson said.
"I'm very confident we would have found him eventually, but with digital tools like this, it certainly does make our job a lot easier," Kennie said.
