A Chicago-area disappearance that baffled authorities for four years has come to an end after a missing Milwaukee teenager was discovered alive in Blacksburg, Virginia, where officials say she was held captive.
Joniah Walker went missing on June 23, 2022, at the age of 15. According to law officials, Walker took an Uber from Milwaukee to meet a man she had chatted with online for several years outside a Chicago movie theater. According to investigators, the man encouraged her to meet with him and then detained her against her will.
Walker’s parents saw that a turned-off cellphone immediately indicated trouble on the day she vanished.
“Her dad called me and was like, ‘Her phone’s going to voicemail.’ I knew immediately it was just off,” a family member recalled.
Following her abduction, Walker’s family and friends organized a public effort to find her, condemning the Milwaukee Police Department’s first response. Relatives gathered their own evidence, including local surveillance film, and expressed dissatisfaction with the law enforcement response.
“Why didn’t the cops knock on people’s doors? Like, everyone on that block has a Ring camera. “We got the videos, not the cops,” one relative explained.
“No one interviewed or sat me down. Another family member remarked, “It was us against the police stations, with a glass between us.”
Walker, 19, was 730 miles away in a little frame house near Blacksburg. According to police, she was subjected to physical and sexual assault while being held captive by Owen Anderson, 37. According to court filings, Anderson disposed of both her own cellphone and a burner phone he had previously handed to her in a sidewalk garbage can.
Milwaukee County authorities have charged Anderson with kidnapping and child abduction. He is still in detention in Virginia awaiting extradition and an initial court appearance in Wisconsin.
The Milwaukee Police Department declined to comment on the circumstances of the abduction or how the investigation is being conducted. Authorities earlier indicated that there was no proof that Walker was targeted by a broader network.
“I can assure you that we have no reason to believe she was involved in human trafficking,” Milwaukee Police Officer Jamie Sromalla told local TV station WTMJ in 2025.
A Milwaukee police officer reinforced his stance in a statement to NBC, claiming that characterizing the case as human trafficking would be misleading. Court documents, however, show that allegations of kidnapping, child abduction, and sexual abuse have been brought in connection with her multi-year incarceration.
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