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The FBI announced a $10,000 reward on Monday for information leading to Naomi Irion, an 18-year-old who the bureau says was abducted from a Walmart parking lot in Fernley, Nevada, on the morning of March 12.
The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office arrested Troy Driver, 41, in connection with Irion’s disappearance on Friday. He’s currently being held at the Yerington Jail on kidnapping charges and is due in court on Wednesday.
Irion parked her car at the Walmart shortly after 5:00 a.m. on March 12 and was waiting to catch an employee bus to her job at a Panasonic factory when authorities say she was abducted.
Surveillance video shows a suspect walking from a nearby homeless camp and “lurking in vehicles,” before he got into Irion’s diver’s seat and drove off with her in the passenger’s seat.
Three days later, Irion’s vehicle was located in Fernley and authorities found evidence inside that suggested her disappearance was criminal in nature.
On March 25, deputies from the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office arrested Driver and impounded a pickup truck that they believe may have been involved in Irion’s disappearance.
Driver was previously sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1997 for murdering a methamphetamine dealer and robbing a string of convenience stores, the Ukiah Daily Journal reported at the time.
Irion moved from South Africa to Nevada, where she was living with her older brother, in August 2021.
Naomi’s father, Herve Irion, works for the U.S. State Department in the foreign service and is currently stationed in South Africa. He traveled to Nevada with Irion’s mother last week to assist with the search for their daughter.
NAOMI IRION DISAPPEARANCE: SUSPECT IN CUSTODY, BUT 18-YEAR-OLD NOWHERE TO BE FOUND
“No piece of information is too small to report at this point,” Irion’s mother, Diana Irion, said at a press conference last week. “We need everyone’s help across the nation… She could be anywhere.”
Naomi Irion’s mother, sister and father speaking at a March 22 press conference in Nevada.
(Lyon County Sheriff)
Irion’s brother, Casey Valley, said that while authorities are treating his sister’s disappearance as a kidnapping, he believes that it could be a sex trafficking case.
“It really seems like this was maybe a group of people — more than one person. So we have that person on video, but there may be some indication that there might be other people involved, other vehicles involved,” Valley previously told Fox News Digital.
“And we are working very closely with law enforcement to help them with all of that,” Valley said. “But we don’t know who did this, and that’s important to convey.”
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Anyone with information about Irion’s disappearance can call a local FBI field office or the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office at 775-463-6620.
Fox News’s Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
