The disappearance of 16-year-old Kiely Rodni, who vanished after an end-of-high-school party at a California campground early Saturday, has become an abduction investigation, officials said Tuesday.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office said they believe Kiely may have been abducted because they haven’t been able to locate her silver 2013 Honda CRV.
Kiely was last seen at a massive party with about 200 to 300 kids and young adults at the Prosser Family Campground in Truckee, California, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Angela Musallam told The Daily Beast.
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Her mom, Lindsey Rodni Nieman, said Keily texted her at about 11:30 p.m. to say she was going to leave at about 12:15 a.m. to come home. “And I asked her to wake me up when she got in. That was always kind of what we did. And she said, ‘OK, mama. Love you.’ And that was the last [I heard],” she told Fox 40.
Musallam added that Keily “communicated she wanted to go home to her friends around 12:15 a.m., and then her phone went off the grid around 12:30 a.m.”
Keily’s best friend, Magdalene Larson, told Fox 40 that the Senior Farewell Party turned out to be “way, way larger than ever expected” after word spread beyond those in the Truckee Tahoe region.
“Within the only 10 minutes I was there, I literally had a group of five guys, try to come get me to take as many bong rips as I could forcefully, without my boyfriend present,” she said.
“There was a lot of guys that did approach us. Definitely, I was getting a gut feeling that during that party that something, something just didn’t feel right with the number of people that were there and how old some of these people were.”
In a video posted to the sheriff’s Twitter, Rodni-Nieman begged the public for any tips that could lead to her daughter’s safe return, adding that the family is “not looking to bust anybody else or get anybody in trouble.”
“We just want her home,” she said, choking back tears. “We’re so scared and we miss her so much and we love her so much.”
The sheriff’s office has set up a tip line at 530-581-6320 and stressed that callers can remain anonymous.
Helicopters searched for Kiely on Monday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and continued to fly around the campsite area Tuesday.
Five additional law enforcement agencies are assisting the sheriff’s office in the search for Kiely, including the California Highway Patrol, the FBI and Homeland Security.
As of Tuesday, investigators said they have received more than 100 calls to the tip line, and 77 people had been out searching for her for a combined 528 hours. However, none of those tips have helped investigators get any closer to finding Kiely, Musallam said.
