Iyana Smith, a female teenager who was a minor when she disappeared and is now listed by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as 18 years old, was reported missing from Selden, New York, on February 15, 2024. The official missing-child record identifies Selden, a community in Suffolk County on Long Island, as the place from which Iyana went missing.
Publicly available official information does not describe the circumstances immediately preceding her disappearance, where in Selden she was last seen, who may have last spoken with her, or where she might have intended to go. What is known is that authorities considered her disappearance serious enough for her information and photograph to be distributed through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in cooperation with the New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse. The official record identifies Iyana as female; it does not support describing her as male.
One of the most important pieces of information released about Iyana concerns what she was wearing when she was last seen. Authorities reported that she had on a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants, along with tan Timberland boots. She was also carrying a grey backpack. Those details became part of the public effort to recognize her, particularly because clothing and personal belongings can sometimes provide the first clue for someone who remembers seeing a missing child around the time of a disappearance. Beyond that description, the publicly available NCMEC notice provides few details about what happened that day. No destination is identified, no vehicle is mentioned, and the notice does not describe a person believed to have been accompanying her. It also does not provide a publicly stated explanation for why she disappeared. The absence of those details leaves a significant gap between the last confirmed information about Iyana in Selden and everything that followed.
As time passed, Iyana's case remained publicly circulated as a missing-child investigation. Earlier missing-person compilations also listed her disappearance as beginning on February 15, 2024, in Selden and repeated the same description of the black hooded sweatshirt, black pants, tan Timberland boots, and grey backpack. Those listings identified her as female and showed that she was still a juvenile when the case began. The most current NCMEC record now lists Iyana as 18 years old, reflecting the passage of time since she vanished, while continuing to classify her as missing. No confirmed public account located in the available sources explains where she went after she was last seen, and no official resolution announcing that she has been located appears on the current NCMEC record.
The New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse remains the contact identified on Iyana's official missing-child poster, with information concerning her whereabouts directed to authorities. Her NCMEC case is listed under identification number USNY 49086, and the poster also instructs anyone who encounters her or has relevant information to contact law enforcement. At the heart of the case is a teenager who disappeared from Selden on February 15, 2024, carrying a grey backpack and dressed largely in black, leaving behind a public record containing only a small number of clues about her final known movements. Years later, the essential questions remain unanswered in the information that authorities have made public: what happened after Iyana was last seen, where she went, and where she is now. Her case continues to be publicly listed as missing, and even a seemingly minor recollection connected to Iyana, her clothing, her backpack, or her movements around the time she disappeared could potentially provide investigators with information that helps bring clarity to her disappearance.Last Seen: Feb 15, 2024
