FERNLEY, Nev. (NewsNation) — More than two weeks have passed since 18-year-old Naomi Irion disappeared from a Walmart parking lot in Nevada, and her face is plastered on missing person posters around every corner in the town of Fernley.
Although police have arrested a 41-year-old man, Troy Driver, in connection with her disappearance, the search for Irion is ongoing. Irion family says he is not cooperating with investigators. The FBI now is offering a reward of as much as $10,000 for information that leads to the young woman’s location.
“I’m trying desperately to save her life,” Irion’s mother Diana Irion said. “Because we know that wherever she is, she is not safe. We had to get to her. Time is running out.”
Watch above: NewsNation’s Brian Entin provides an update on the case with former FBI Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer
What we know
Irion was last seen at about 5 a.m. on March 12 in the parking lot of a Walmart in Fernley. It was still dark outside and the parking lot relatively empty as Irion waited for a shuttle to take her to work.
Surveillance footage showed a man wearing a hoodie pacing in the parking lot before approaching Irion’s car. He is then seen at 5:25 a.m. entering the vehicle and driving away, presumably with Irion in the passenger’s seat.
“When he turns and he squares his shoulders and he is staring at her car,” Diana Irion said, “Oh, I got such chills. It was like that moment when a lion spots its prey and is about to pounce.”
Her vehicle was located three days later next to a Sherwin-Williams Western Emulsion Plant. Detectives say she was active on social media until 5:23 a.m.
Diana Irion said her daughter is a “deer in the headlights” and isn’t likely to put up a fight in a dire situation.
The 18-year-old spent her childhood traveling the world — Germany, Russia, South Africa — with her diplomat father. In August, she moved to Fernley to live with her brother, Casey Valley. Naomi Irion was striving for independence at the time of her disappearance — driving her own car, working three to four days a week and saving money for her own place, Valley said.
According to her mother, Naomi Irion wanted “the American dream.”
“She wanted to live an American normal life like all of the other 18-year-old girls out there…things that American kids take for granted that she was never allowed to do overseas,” Diana Irion said. “And she finally had the freedom to experience all those things.”
Naomi Irion is described as being 5-foot-11 and weighing about 240 to 250 pounds. She was last seen wearing a blue Panasonic company shirt, a gray cardigan, gray pants and dark Ugg-style boots. She was carrying a black purse and wallet and her hair was black at the time of her disappearance. She also has a septum ring and two nose piercings as well as a tattoo of a smiley face on her right ankle, her family said.
The alleged kidnapper
On Friday, police arrested Troy Driver of Fallon, Nevada, on kidnapping charges tied to Irion’s disappearance. Officials have not released further details about the allegations and Irion’s family doesn’t believe they knew one another.
Driver remained at the local county jail in Yerington, Nevada, Tuesday afternoon and is scheduled to make a court appearance via Zoom on Wednesday. The Lyon County Court Clerk’s Office could not immediately be reached Tuesday for additional information, including whether Driver had yet hired an attorney.
Reports from 1997 in the Ukiah Daily Journal in California detailed Driver’s arrest in connection with the murder of a 19-year-old. Driver was 17 at the time of the crime and pleaded guilty to multiple counts of robbery, burglary, use of a firearm and being an accessory to murder after the fact, California court records show.
He was not charged with or convicted of murder. Two others also were arrested in connection with the same incident.
Driver accepted a plea deal in the 1997 case and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He would have been eligible for release after 12 years, according to newspaper reports at the time.
Diana said it’s unconscionable that Driver, a father, could hurt someone else’s child.
“I can’t imagine that a man who is a father to a little girl could do out there and take someone else’s little girl away from them,” Diana Irion said. “I don’t understand. I want him to try and put himself into our shoes and how we feel. How would he feel if this happened to his little girl? He needs to give up her location and give her back to us.”
