Police are investigating the suspicious disappearance of an 18-year-old woman who was last seen over the weekend in a parking lot of a Walmart in Nevada.
The last sighting of Naomi Irion was in the early hours of March 12 at a Walmart parking lot in Fernley where she catches the shuttle for her job at a nearby plant. Her brother said surveillance video showed a man circling Irion's car before shoving his way into her driver's-side door, KRNV reported.
"It (the video) ruined me. I mean, I couldn't believe what I was looking at. You know, I didn't want to believe it," her brother Casey Valley told KRXI.
Irion moved to the area less than a year ago with her older brother to begin her "adult life." She got a job at Panasonic and took a work shuttle that leaves near the Walmart parking lot and drives her over to the plant.
About 5 a.m. Saturday morning, Irion was seen buying an energy drink at a local gas station close to the home she shares with her brother. It was the last known time she used her bank account. Shortly afterward, Irion left to wait in the Walmart parking lot to take the shuttle. Valley said she "always parked in the same spot," KRXI reported.
Surveillance video—which has not been released—shows a man wearing a hoodie and a face mask walking toward the parking lot before circling around Irion's car and forcing his way into the driver's-side door. The man either said or did something to make Irion move into the passenger seat, then proceeded to drive off, Valley said at a press conference Thursday, according to NBC News.
Police found her abandoned car on Tuesday in an industrial park in Fernley. The car has been searched and forensically analyzed. Officers found evidence in the car that suggests "Naomi's disappearance is criminal in nature," the Lyon County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Police said the man in the video could have been driving a dark 2020 or newer-model Chevrolet truck. The department said the driver has a "direct connection to her disappearance and her current whereabouts." They have not released any additional information about him and do not have the license plate number of the truck.
Irion has shoulder-length brown hair and was last seen wearing a blue shirt, grey cardigan and a black crossbody bag. Police are asking for anyone with information to contact the Lyon County Sheriff's Office.
When Newsweek reached out to the sheriff's office to verify the details Valley described in the footage, an officer said police could not confirm them because the department was still going through the video forensics. The officer described the footage as "distant and dark."
Update 3/17/22, 6:08 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information from the sheriff's office.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
