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Teen Disappears From Walmart Parking Lot After Mysterious Hooded Suspect Is Seen Getting Into Her Car
Naomi Irion had been sitting in her car at the Walmart parking when someone approached her and "said or did something that made her move to the passenger seat" before they drove away, according to her family.
The family of a missing Nevada teenager, who disappeared from a Walmart parking lot in Fernley after she was approached by a mysterious man who got into her vehicle, is pleading for answers about her troubling disappearance.
“I need your help. My sister is missing,” Tamara Cartwright said in a TikTok video about her missing 18-year-old sister, Naomi Irion.
Irion disappeared around 5 a.m. on Saturday, March 12 as she waited in a Walmart parking lot for a shuttle to her job.
According to the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office, a person was seen on surveillance footage “walking from a nearby ‘homeless camp’ lurking in vehicles” before he was seen getting into the driver’s seat of Naomi’s car, which was found several days later abandoned in an industrial park not far from the Walmart.
“Evidence suggesting Naomi’s disappearance was criminal in nature was located in the vehicle,” authorities said.
The sheriff’s office, who has called the disappearance “suspicious” released surveillance footage over the weekend that shows a hooded figure pacing on the east side of Walmart building just minutes before Irion was abducted.
The suspect can be seen walking directly in front of vehicles at times before walking in front in the building and then stepping into the parking lot as the clip ends.
“She was in the passenger seat of her vehicle, someone came up to her while she was in the driver’s seat, said or did something that made her move to the passenger seat and they drove away,” Cartwright said.
Irion’s older brother, Casey Valley, told local station KRNV Irion often arrived early to the Walmart parking lot, where she caught the shuttle to her job at Panasonic, “so she could, you know, do social media stuff before she went to work and catch up with her friends that are in different time zones.”
The sheriff’s office has also released the last known pictures of Irion at a convenience store near her home around 5 a.m. where she bought an energy drink at a local gas station before arriving at the parking lot.
Irion—one of seven siblings—moved in with her brother in August to start her “adult life” and got a job at the nearby tech plant.
Valley, who said the family also has relatives in South Africa, described his sister as a compassionate homebody who loved spending time with friends and rockhounding.
The family believes it’s possible Irion had been targeted in the kidnapping.
“There’s a possibility it could be an ex-boyfriend, she’s had multiple exes,” Cartwright said in a follow-up TikTok video.
Cartwright lives in Houston but said she traveled to the Reno area to help with the search after her sister disappeared.
According to Valley, the family believed the disappearance was sinister in nature as soon as they saw the surveillance footage of the abduction.
“It ruined me,” he told the local news outlet. “I mean, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. You know, I didn’t want to believe it.”
Investigators have launched “large-scale searches” to try to find Irion and are enlisting help from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, the sheriff’s office said.
Cartwright described her sister has having several distinctive markings including septum and nostril piercings and a smiley face tattoo on her ankle.
Anyone with information about the disappearance is urged to contact authorities.
