COLORADO CITY, Texas — Clint Dunn has been mourning the loss of his daughter, Hailey Dunn, since 2010. But now he is using what happened to him to try and make a difference in the lives of others in the form of legislation.
"13 years later, 12.5 years later, and they're still finding evidence and they're still having to process things," said Dunn.
Hailey went missing in 2010, and almost 3 years later her body was found in a lake. Shawn Adkins, the boyfriend of Hailey's mother, was arrested and charged for her murder in 2021. Right now, he awaits trial.
"The attorney general's office said that they are still receiving data, and that's why they need the delay because they're still finding discovery materials," said Christine Salzer, founder of Moms on a Mission. "That's an issue."
Dunn is trying to make a change, so that what happened to him and his family doesn't happen again.
"I think, without a doubt, that if this legislation was in place at that police department then things would have went way differently and an arrest would have been made over a decade ago," said Dunn.
Dunn is trying to pass a bill in memory of his daughter called "Hailey's Act," which focuses on police accountability
"Police departments haven't been held accountable for whenever they mess up, and having transparency with parents and families of missing people and murdered people, there's just no transparency," said Dunn.
Their goal is to improve police forces and add new rules and regulatory bodies.
"The mistakes that happen in cases like this, we see that repeated," said Salzer. "The ultimate goal is to make them better officers. You know, what we do can sound like it's critical or like we want to beat them down, and that's not it at all. What we want to do is to make sure they have the proper support that they need."
At this time, Clint Dunn has just drafted a bill himself and he is looking for lawmakers to help co-write the bill with him.