(SAFFORD, Ariz.) — As the search for a missing 12-year-old Arizona girl entered its second week, the child’s mother spoke out, saying, “I’m scared to death.”
Betty Taylor was reported missing by her family eight days ago after she told her father was going for a walk and never returned to her home in Safford, Arizona, according to the Graham County Sheriff’s Office.
Over the weekend, community volunteers fanned out across the Graham County town, passing out missing person flyers to raise awareness about the child’s disappearance.
Police have also used helicopters, search dogs and drones to look for the girl, and officers on horseback and all-terrain vehicles have combed the desert area around the small town at the foot of the Pinaleno Mountains in southeast Arizona, about 130 miles from Tucson.
“I’m scared to death about what she’s going through. I don’t know if she’s out there on her own. I don’t know if she has a safe place to be. I don’t know if she’s eating,” the girl’s anguished mother, Bonnie Jones, told ABC affiliate station KNXV in Phoenix.
Betty was last seen on March 20 when she left her home at about 11 a.m., telling her father, Justin Taylor, she was going for a walk, according to a statement from the Graham County Sheriff’s Office. When she failed to return home by 6 p.m. that day, the family went searching for her before reporting her missing at 8 p.m. that night, according to the statement.
The girl is described as 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 135 pounds with hazel eyes and shoulder-length brown hair with red highlights. She left her home wearing a black sweatshirt with white letters on the front, a neon-colored baseball cap, blue jeans and turquoise and pink Vans tennis shoes.
She was also carrying a purple JanSport backpack, according to the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff’s officials asked that anyone with information about the girl’s whereabouts immediately call 911 or contact investigators at (929) 428-3141.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics.
The bill bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and states that any instruction on those topics cannot occur “in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” according to the legislation, HB 1557.
“We will make sure that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination,” DeSantis said before signing the bill Monday.
The legislation states that the Florida Department of Education would have to update its standards in accordance with the requirements.
Under this bill, parents can also decline any mental, emotional and physical health services available to their children at school, and schools will be required to notify parents of their child’s use of school health services unless there is reason to believe “that disclosure would subject the student to abuse, abandonment or neglect.”
Parents could sue their school district if they believe there is a violation of any of these requirements or restrictions.
The bill is expected to go into effect July 1.
“I think the last couple years have really revealed to parents that they are being ignored increasingly across our country when it comes to their kids education. We have seen curriculum embedded for very, very young children, classroom materials about sexuality and woke gender ideology. We’ve seen libraries that have clearly inappropriate pornographic materials for very young kids,” DeSantis claimed at the signing.
The bill has stirred debate and controversy nationwide.
Critics say that this ban is aimed at ridding classrooms of LGBTQ content and discussion.
They say it will harm LGBTQ youth by shunning representation and inclusion in classrooms, putting the mental health and safety of this group at risk.
“Let us be clear: Should its vague language be interpreted in any way that causes harm to a single child, teacher or family, we will lead legal action against the State of Florida to challenge this bigoted legislation,” local LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Florida said in a statement.
They also said erasing the presence of the LGBTQ community from lessons implies students should be ashamed or should suppress their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Legislators against the bill argued that students are aware of gender identity and sexual orientation at a young age and said schools should be allowed to offer spaces to discuss these topics.
The Biden administration has denounced the legislation and met with LGBTQ youth and their families in the state.
“Laws around the country, including in Florida, have targeted and sought to bully some of our most vulnerable students and families and create division in our schools,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
He added: “My message to you is that this administration won’t stand for bullying or discrimination of any kind, and we will use our authorities to protect, support and provide opportunities for LGBTQI+ students and all students.”
Supporters of the bill say that these discussions and decisions should be left to the parents.
“What we’re preventing is a school district deciding they’re going to create a curriculum to insert themselves,” Rep. Joe Harding, the sponsor of the bill, told ABC News on the podcast “Start Here.”
He added, “Families are families. Let the families be families. The school district doesn’t need to insert themselves at that point when children are still learning how to read and do basic math.”
“This bill is not intended to hurt students,” added Florida state Sen. Kelli Stargel in debate on the legislation. “This bill is not intended to out gay children. This bill is intended to strengthen the family.”
More than six in 10 Americans oppose legislation that would prohibit classroom lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school, a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — As wildfires continue to blaze through central Texas, one particular fire named Das Goat Fire has prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to declare a state of disaster, saying these wildfires pose an imminent threat of widespread or severe damage.
The Das Goat Fire resulted from a vehicle fire on Friday in Medina County and has now spread across the county and burned over 1,000 acres so far.
In a recent press conference, the governor said 19 state agencies and over 200 firefighters were currently responding to the disaster.
“The State of Texas continues to collaborate with local officials on the ground and respond to fire activity to keep Texans safe,” Abbott said.
Three homes have been lost and 37 others have been threatened, according to the governor.
Due to the high winds, dry heat and drought conditions, many areas throughout Texas will remain under a high to extreme elevated fire risk.
For those who may have been displaced or evacuated due to the fire, there is shelter currently at Loma Alta Middle School and more shelters will soon be announced.
(SALEM, Ore.) — A 24-year-old man was under arrest after police alleged he killed four people when his car left a roadway and slammed into a homeless encampment in Salem, Oregon.
Enrique Rodriguez was being held without bail on Monday in Salem on multiple counts of felony manslaughter, according to online jail records.
The episode unfolded at about 2 a.m. Sunday when Rodriguez’s sports car careened off a road, jumped a sidewalk and crashed into several tents, according to the Salem Police Department.
Two people were pronounced dead at the scene in northeast Salem and two others died after being taken to Salem Health Hospital, police said. Three other people, all believed to have been living in the homeless camp, were hospitalized with injuries.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation. Police said in a statement that investigators “believe alcohol may have been a contributing factor.”
A preliminary investigation by the Salem Police Traffic Team indicates Rodriguez was driving a two-door sports coupe northbound when the vehicle left the roadway and crashed into the encampment, pinning two people under the car.
The names of those killed and injured were not immediately released.
Rodriguez was the sole occupant of the car and was also taken to a hospital with injuries, police said.
He was later booked into the Marion County Jail on four counts of first-degree manslaughter and charges of second-degree assault, third-degree assault and six counts of reckless endangerment.
Police said the exact number of people at the encampment at the time of the incident was unclear and referred questions to the Marion County District Attorney’s Office.
The homeless camp was on the property of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and just feet from a railroad track, according to ABC affiliate station KATU-TV in Portland.
A KATU news crew reported on the same homeless camp about a week ago after neighboring business owners expressed frustrations over the city’s handling of the homeless problem.
Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — As many Americans resume some sense of normalcy in daily life, a large sector of the population hit hard by the pandemic requires more assistance than ever and nonprofit groups are working tirelessly to deliver essential help for the increasing number of seniors in need.
Hundreds of thousands of older adults across the country struggled with hunger and isolation before COVID-19, and Meals on Wheels said it has doubled down its efforts to meet growing demand even as compounding issues of inflation, food costs and gas prices rock its channels of support and funds.
The Older Americans Act (OAA) Nutrition Programs, which celebrated 50 years this month, provides grants to states to help support nutrition services for people over the age of 60 throughout the country. Meals on Wheels President and CEO Ellie Hollander called it “foundational financial federal support” for its more than 5,000 community programs, but told Good Morning America why especially in the wake of the pandemic and up against new hurdles, it’s not enough.
“What people may not know is that Meals on Wheels is a public-private partnership, so the federal government provides approximately 40% of the seed funding — but we need individuals, we need corporations and foundations to step up to the plate to help fill that gap,” Hollander said. “Quite frankly, the funding has never been adequate to meet the growing demand, the increase in the senior population, not to mention inflation and, most recently, the cost of food and gasoline. Being that we do deliver the price of gas really does impact our operations.”
Hollander noted that Congress stepped up in the short term and delivered emergency funding to ensure seniors were not left behind during the pandemic, but said “the last amount of funding we got was a year ago in March 2021.”
“Congress finally passed the appropriations bills for 2022 and we were expecting, given the huge surge in need and more meals being served to more seniors, that both the House and Senate would approve a large increase in spending,” she explained. “However, Congress only approved a 1.5% increase — which is completely inadequate and we’re very concerned about a services cliff nationwide.”
As of 2022, eight out of 10 of the organization’s more than 5,000 local programs serve more home-delivered meals than they did prior to March 2020, Meals on Wheels reported in a recent fact sheet.
“The pandemic, I think, really created a lot of hardships for seniors and threw a whole new pipeline of older adults into homebound status,” Hollander said. “Our programs at the local level have been stepping up building capacity on a regular basis, not really knowing where the funding is coming from, but wanting to be sure that no senior is left behind.”
Logistics amid pandemic, inflation, rising fuel costs and disruptions in food supply
Holly Hagler’s program in Orange County served 10,000 people a year prior to the pandemic — 90% of whom live below the senior poverty level — with a million home delivered meals and hot lunches for group settings in senior centers annually.
“We went from serving about 5,000 hot meals per week to serving 30,000 frozen meals, a week,” Hagler told GMA of the surge when the program converted to grab-and-go. “It’s a 600% increase so the cost of it all has just been huge. We were spending about $3 million annually on just the raw food costs and on packaging supplies for the food. And as a combination of both the increase in volume and inflation, we’re serving more than 5 million meals annually. For us, a 10% increase in food costs equals, an average impact of $400,000 or more a year. That equates to about 75,000 fewer meals that we can serve.”
“Older adults have been hit the hardest by COVID and now they are really getting hit extra hard,” she said, adding that “a lot of them can’t afford to come to the senior center everyday anymore to get a hot meal because they’re living on fixed income with health care costs, gasoline and food prices, and they’re concerned.”
She said her program’s fleet of trucks that hit the road daily have been slammed by the soaring gas prices in just the past few months.
“Our gasoline bill in January was $9,500 and now we’re expecting it to be $12,500 this month, maybe pushing $13,000,” Hagler said. “For us that annual impact is 9,000 meals. So everything boils down to how many fewer meals can we serve because of these rising prices.”
San Antonio Meals on Wheels CEO Vinsen Faris, who has been involved with the organization since 1988, told GMA that “optimism was growing coming into the spring after the very, very tough two years we’ve had. However, with rising gas prices suddenly everything is getting turned on its head again.”
“When you have an organization like this that relies on so many volunteers — to deliver meals using their own vehicles and their own fuel to see those prices going up at the pumps — we started hearing from volunteers and they’re concerned,” he said. “I had a lady this week in a Prius of all things, when I was greeting her in the pickup line and she said ‘I just don’t know about these prices.’ So it’s been tough. Now with the fuel costs rising we’re going to see additional cost pressure on the food products themselves, plus our cost of fuel here just in the delivery of meals that we undertake.”
Another large hurdle currently facing Hagler’s program is that “people working from home that volunteered have returned to the office.”
“A lot of cities stepped up huge in our area and put their recreation staff in vehicles delivering the meals that we provide. But they’re opening back up and called back into regular jobs, so we’re really at a critical point here because of inflation and challenges with staffing — I’ve never seen turnover like this in my entire career of 35 plus years.”
Another critical challenge Faris has faced in San Antonio amid the pandemic “has been the wonkiness of the food supply chain.”
“That has impacted the food products that we could get in here to prepare because sometimes it was just, ‘surprise that’s not coming in’ and we’re not going to get it,” he said. “The biggest problem has been the cost increase. Since the start of the pandemic our actual meal cost of increased about 20%,” he said of their program that operates its own kitchen and is in the process of completing a new 44,000 square foot facility slated to open in October. “We’re producing 50,000 meals a week — so it’s really high volume but the cost has put a strain on it.”
Bigger than food deliveries
One silver lining Faris has found from all of this is the spotlight the pandemic has put on isolation and the need to look out for seniors.
“We’ve actually increased the number of clients that we were serving pre pandemic by almost 80% and it’s that public support that has allowed us to do that,” he said of the now 4,500 meals served daily compared to 2,500 before the pandemic. “We are just now getting back to pre-pandemic levels of volunteers … we have more meals delivered here in San Antonio, Texas, by individual volunteers than we have ever had in our 40 plus year history.”
“With older adults it’s not just income, it’s isolation, which is probably the single greatest risk factor they have because they’re not connected to resources. It is lack of capacity, whether it’s their mobility, declining cognitive capacity or just losing interest in cooking,” Hagler explained. “We really need people to stand up for seniors.”
Faris echoed a similar sentiment adding that “the more we can shine the light on our older adults who are having challenges — I believe that the public is going to respond and do the right thing.”
“We have to pay it back, these are the people who made it possible for all of us to be here today. They were our teachers in school, they were our firemen. Whoever they were, doing whatever in the community, they made it all possible for us, so we need to be taking care of them,” he said.
How Americans can take action
Hollander said there are three main ways to support The Meals on Wheels America organization.
First, donations to a local program. “A little goes a long way. This is when individuals can truly be heroes too,” she said.
Second, offer to volunteer. “It doesn’t mean that you need to be delivering meals, it can be skilled volunteering. Making phone calls or writing cards to let seniors know that someone’s thinking of them. That made a big difference during the pandemic.”
Third, advocate. “Particularly with federal funding not keeping pace with need and the gap growing further between those in need and not being served it’s very important for people to step up and advocate for more funding for this critically important 50-year proven program.”
Hollander, who has been in her role for more than nine years shared what she calls “the best fact that says it all: we can provide a senior with Meals on Wheels for an entire year for the same cost as being in the hospital for one day or a nursing home for 10.”
(NEW YORK) — As gas prices continue to soar across the country, three states have opted to temporarily waive their gas tax to provide relief for motorists. Other states are mulling similar plans.
Last week, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed legislation that suspended their states’ gas taxes for a limited period. On Thursday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed a legislative package that included a tax holiday on the state’s gas tax during the spring.
While the move may save drivers around 30 cents per gallon at the pump, economic and policy experts warn that it is only a stop-gap solution.
“They may not lower [gas] consumption and they might increase it,” Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at gas price app GasBuddy, told ABC News of the tax holidays. “I would love to pay less at the pump too, but this is a Band-Aid solution.”
The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $4.24 as of March 25, according to AAA. Some states, particularly those on the West Coast, are seeing average prices of over $5 a gallon, AAA’s data shows.
Last month, the national average price was $3.57 a gallon and a year ago, it was $2.87, according to the association.
Georgia’s effort suspends its tax of 29 cents a gallon until the end of May, Maryland’s rule suspends its tax of 36.1 cents per gallon until mid-April and Connecticut’s rule suspends the state’s tax of 25 cents per gallon until June 30.
The governors of the three states said drivers were feeling the pinch every week at the pump and they needed to take immediate action.
“We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to provide relief for Marylanders,” Hogan said in a statement last week after signing his state’s legislation.
The leaders also said their state budgets have the money from surpluses and the federal relief package to offset the lost tax revenue.
“Connecticut is in a stronger fiscal position than ever before, and I am determined to use every tool available to provide relief for our residents,” Lamont said in a statement.
Other state leaders have said they are considering similar gas tax holidays, including ones in Michigan and California.
Giacomo Santangelo, senior lecturer of economics at Fordham University, told ABC News the nation’s rising gas prices are caused by a number of factors outside of the control of the states, including the global supply chain problems and the ongoing Ukraine-Russian conflict.
Political pressure and desperation from commuters, businesses and other motorists have forced state leaders to think outside of the box, he said.
“The bottom line is gas prices aren’t going to go down anytime soon and people do need help,” Santangelo told ABC News.
Santangelo, however, said that those leaders are taking a big risk by implementing a temporary gas tax holiday. There is no indication that gas prices will return to under $4 a gallon in the coming weeks, he noted.
“If what they are doing is they are giving a 25-cent break on their gas, then what happens when gas goes up 25 cents in a few weeks anyway? You’re now back in the same situation and the government is in a worse place. There are a lot of unknowns,” Santangelo said.
De Haan said there is a potential longer-term problem by creating a gas tax holiday — increased demand for gas when supply is still low. He said temporary tax suspension will spur some drivers to take trips that may not have been necessary, and they will gas up when they won’t need to.
“The right way to handle this situation is not to reduce the price, it’s to tell motorists to reduce consumption,” he said.
Santangelo said that lowering the price through a gas tax suspension does set up expected demand from motorists. He noted that this isn’t the first time the country has experienced surging gas prices and it won’t be the last time and a gas tax holiday may not work, especially if supply doesn’t change.
“Demand was going to go up anyway, because we’re heading into the summer season. The question we have to ask is, ‘Do we want to have demand so high and risk shortages?'” he said.
Santangelo cautioned that solutions involving rebates or cash incentives could also create this demand.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a program last week that would provide $400 per vehicle to offset rising gas prices, for up to two vehicles per resident. The money would be funded with the state’s budget surplus.
“It could turn into is something that the government keeps getting sucked into,” Santangelo said. “You’re able to give $400 now but would you be able to sustain that if prices don’t go down?”
Representatives for Kemp, Hogan and Lamont told ABC News that their gas tax suspension proposals were planned out with the intention of helping their state’s motorists while at the same time avoiding any long-term economic problems.
They also stated their individual state surpluses would cover the lost revenue generated from the taxes, which generally pay for road repairs and other transportation costs.
“At this point, we have seen no issues related to supply and demand,” Michael Ricci, a spokesman for Hogan’s office, said in a statement to ABC News on Friday.
A spokeswoman for Kemp’s office also said Georgia isn’t seeing any increases in gas demand since the gas tax holiday went into effect. Kemp tweeted Friday that the state’s average gas price dropped by 24 cents a gallon.
“We’re going to keep working to get Georgians relief from sky-high prices & inflation!” he tweeted.
Max Reiss, a spokesman for Lamont, told ABC News that the state’s gas tax suspension is part of an overall $100 million package to help residents, and included a one-week clothing sales tax suspension and free bus rides for a month.
“What our residents are looking for is that their government is listening to their concerns. We are trying to do something in our power to do something,” Reiss told ABC News.
Reiss added that the state continues to push residents to lower their demand for gasoline with programs such as tax incentives for electric car purchases.
The economic experts warned that there is no way to determine when gas prices will come down, especially if the Ukraine-Russia conflict continues into the summer. More importantly, they warned that gas prices will likely decrease at a far slower rate compared to the rate they have jumped in recent weeks.
De Haan said it is imperative that states not rely on the gas tax holidays as their only solution during the gas crisis and that they need to encourage motorists to curb their driving plans as best they can.
“There’s not going to be a quick shift to lower prices and we all need to be ready for that,” he said.
(BOULDER, Colorado) — Diminishing winds on Sunday were helping firefighters battle a wildfire that came close to homes near Boulder, Colorado, and forced the evacuation of about 19,000 people, authorities said.
The blaze, dubbed the NCAR Fire because its proximity to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, ignited Saturday and has burned roughly 200 acres southwest of Boulder, fire officials said.
The fire was initially fueled by thick brush and fanned by strong winds, prompting officials on Saturday to evacuate around 8,000 homes and around 19,000 people. The fire came within 1,000 yards of houses near the west end of Boulder, said Mike Smith, a wildland fire specialist for Boulder Fire Rescue and the incident commander on the NCAR Fire.
On Sunday morning, fire officials said the winds had died down overnight, and firefighters worked to get 21% of the blaze contained. Most of the evacuations were lifted overnight.
Officials said 1,629 people remained evacuated from nearly 700 homes.
Smith said at a news conference Sunday that there was 0% containment on some areas of the fire and air tankers were expected to drop fire retardant on those problem areas.
He also said no homes or structures have been damaged by the fire and no injuries have been reported.
“So, we’re very happy to report that yesterday we had a great day as far as our initial attack when we had over 200 firefighters from over 30 agencies,” Smith said. “That, combined with all of the fuels mitigation treatments that we’ve done in this area, is one of the reasons that we had such great success.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The fire ignited around 2 p.m. Saturday near the National Center for Atmospheric Research on the southwestern edge of Boulder and forced evacuations in south Boulder and the Eldorado Springs area.
The blaze occurred near the area where a fire ignited on Dec. 30 and burned more than 6,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 structures, including 500 homes.
“I think this is just a sign of the way things are going to go,” Smith said. “We continue to work on our planning processes. We continue to work on team building and work with our partners to make sure that we’re as dialed as we can be. We’re feeling good, but we’re a little nervous about the upcoming season.”
(NEW YORK) — Last fall, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to the state’s school board association saying public schools shouldn’t have “obscene” books and called on certain books about gender and sexual orientation, among others, to be removed.
During last year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin campaigned on removing certain books from schools, including Toni Morrison’s book “Beloved,” which deals with slavery and has graphic sexual encounters.
Texas is the latest state to introduce legislation concerning how controversial subjects including race and even the Holocaust are taught in schools. There have been over 122 such bills introduced across the country since last year.
Books focusing on LGBTQ and racial issues that critics say are inappropriate for students are being banned across the country. Now, some librarians are joining together to protest those bans.
“We felt that a different image needed to be portrayed of librarians…And so we really wanted a positive message to go out about our work and to shed light on what was going on in Texas,” Carolyn Foote, a Texas librarian and co-founder of FReadom Fighters, told ABC News.
FReadom Fighters was formed by Foote and three other Texas librarians who advocate for students’ freedom to read books. They came together in November 2021 in response to Republican Texas Rep. Matt Krause’s request that schools inform him if they carry books that focus on LGBTQ and racial issues.
FReadom Fighters started as a social media movement with the hashtag “#FReadom” in protest of Krause’s request, and then blossomed into activism.
“For them, this is personal. It isn’t just about adults arguing about what books should be on the shelves of the library. It’s about stories about their lives, being removed from the shelves, and stories that speak to them,” Foote said.
While Foote and some librarians are fighting for these books to stay on shelves, others disagree and are fighting to keep them off.
“I felt that I had a duty as a parent, because this type of material is so over the top in terms of inappropriateness … I felt I had a duty as a parent, to warn other parents and to bring it to the attention of the school board, because quite honestly, you know, I didn’t know at that moment who’s making these decisions as to what books are put into our school library,” Stacy Langton, a Virginia mother and co-founder of Mama Grizzly, a conservative grassroots organization that she says aims to protect “our children’s learning environments.”
In other states, including North Carolina, Maine and Missouri, Republicans have begun campaigns targeting books that deal with segregation and racism.
However, according to an American Library Association poll, 71% of Americans are opposed to banning books.
“What we found overall is in this polling is that vast majorities of all voters from all political persuasions, and parents, especially don’t support book bans. What we’re hearing from is a very vocal minority,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, tells ABC News.
Foote says that despite their efforts for the books, they are not fighting for students to read them or to agree with everything in them, just that students have the opportunity to read them if they choose.
“It’s just really important that we understand that just because we read something or watch a TV show or read a newspaper article, it doesn’t mean we personally or our students are going to go out and enact anything they read about. Books just have ideas in them, and ideas cause us to think, and we can use our own minds to make critical decisions. And as educators … we train students to ask critical questions like, ‘Where did this data come from? And who wrote this? What is their point of view?'” Foote said.
“And I think that if parents considered that point of view, then they would understand that we’re all in this together as partners,” she added.
(FERNLEY, Nev.) — A suspect in the alleged kidnapping of a Nevada teenager who was last seen in a Walmart parking lot has been arrested, authorities said Friday.
The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office said it has also impounded a pickup truck that was “possibly involved” in 18-year-old Naomi Irion’s disappearance, which has since spawned a nationwide search.
The suspect was identified by the sheriff’s office as Troy Driver, 41, of Fallon, Nevada. He is being held on kidnapping charges.
Meanwhile, the search for the missing teenager remains active, authorities said.
The update comes nearly two weeks after Irion disappeared.
She was last seen inside her car in the parking lot of a Walmart in Fernley, Nevada, outside Reno, according to the sheriff’s office. Surveillance video captured a man getting into the driver’s seat of her car and leaving in an unknown direction with Irion in the passenger seat.
The sheriff’s office initially characterized her disappearance as “suspicious in nature.” After locating her car on March 15 in an industrial park about a mile from the Walmart, the sheriff’s office said investigators found evidence suggesting her disappearance was “criminal in nature.”
Investigators had previously identified a Chevrolet pickup truck whose driver they believed may have a “direct connection” to her current whereabouts, said the sheriff’s office, which released an image of the vehicle while urging the public to help locate it.
The sheriff’s office has also released multiple photos and a video of the man authorities say entered Irion’s car. He has a distinct gait that investigators hoped would help in identifying him.
Detectives have not publicly released surveillance video showing the exact moment the suspect gets into Irion’s car, citing the nature of the ongoing investigation. According to her brother, Casey Valley, who said he has seen the video, Irion was sitting in the driver’s seat, but the suspect “did say or do something to Naomi to make her move over.”
Irion was waiting for a shuttle bus on March 12 around 5 a.m. to take her to her job at Panasonic Energy of North America in the Reno area. Valley, who lives with Irion, reported her missing the following day when she never came home from work.
Irion’s family has made multiple public pleas for her safe return.
“We need everyone’s help across the nation because the incident happened so close to [Interstate] 80,” her mother, Diana Irion, said during a press event earlier this week. “She could be anywhere, anywhere in the nation.”
“Please save my daughter and bring her home,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — A 26-year-old woman arrested this week in the fatal shoving attack of an 87-year-old woman earlier this month on a New York City street has made bail, her attorney said Friday.
Lauren Pazienza, of Port Jefferson, New York, was charged Tuesday with manslaughter in connection to the March 10 incident, police said.
Pazienza turned herself in to the 10th Precinct in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, ABC station WABC reported. She was seen being escorted out of the 10th Precinct with her hair covering her face and did not respond to any questions from reporters about the charge.
Pazienza was arraigned Tuesday in New York Criminal Court on manslaughter and assault charges. A judge set her bail at $500,000 cash or $1 million bond.
Her parents have since posted bail and her attorney, Arthur Aidala, expects her to be released from Rikers Island at some point Friday, he told reporters.
Pazienza’s return court appearance, initially scheduled for Friday, was adjourned until April 25 pending the arraignment on her expected indictment.
“We look forward to getting the evidence and the discovery material from the attorney’s office so my client will now be able to come to our office and discuss the case with her partners and I to determine what the next steps are,” Aidala said.
The attorney called the victim’s death a “tragedy.”
“We’re just going to get to the bottom of what really happened that day after we have all the evidence that’s in possession of the prosecutors because we don’t have any evidence,” Aidala said.
The victim was walking in Chelsea on the night of March 10 when the assailant approached her from behind and pushed her, “causing her to fall and hit her head,” the New York City Police Department said following the incident. She was transported to an area hospital in critical condition. She had suffered a traumatic head injury, her family said.
The victim, who officials identified as Barbara Maier Gustern, died from her injuries on March 15, police said.
The NYPD released surveillance video of the suspect walking along a sidewalk as it called on the public for help in solving what police said appeared to be an unprovoked attack.
“We’re asking the public’s help in solving this disgusting, disgraceful offense committed against a vulnerable, elderly female who was doing nothing but walking down the streets of New York City,” NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said during a briefing last week.
A motive in the attack remains unclear.
Gustern was a well-known and beloved member of the city’s cabaret scene and a vocal coach. Condolences from the theater community have poured in in the wake of her sudden passing.
“We are waiting for the legal process to run its course and look forward to a resolution of the matter,” her grandson, AJ Gustern, said in a statement to ABC News. “While we appreciate the outpouring of affection for my grandmother, the family is still grieving. We ask for respect for our privacy during this difficult time.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
