Alyssa Nicole Taylor

• Missing Since 09/13/2022
• Missing From Exmore, Virginia
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Age 25 years old
• Height and Weight 5'5, 200 pounds
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Brown hair, green eyes. Taylor has tattoos of stars and swirls in black ink on her lower back, a tattoo of music notes in black ink behind her right ear, and a tattoo on her left forearm of a red rose with two green leaves, footprints and the phrase "If Love Could have Saved you you would have lived forever"; photos of the tattoos are posted with this case summary. Her ears are pierced.

Details of Disappearance

Taylor was last seen in Exmore, Virginia on September 13, 2022. She texted her mother saying she was going to join her friend Danny McNeal for two days on McNeal's trucking route to North Carolina. She had taken similar trips before and her mother wasn't concerned.

In the early morning hours of September 14, McNeal died in a the Hillsborough area of Orange County, North Carolina. His tractor-trailer went off the road, colliding with an overpass abutment, and then caught fire. He was drunk; his blood alcohol content was 0.32%, four times the legal driving limit. There was no soot in his airway, leading to the medical examiner's conclusion that he died before the fire. No other remains were found in the wreckage.

When Taylor's family heard about McNeal's death and couldn't get in touch with Taylor, they posted on social media asking anyone who had heard from her to contact them. But no one did, and on September 20, one of Taylor's relatives filed a missing persons report for her.

Some of Taylor's relatives went to the site of McNeal's crash, and found something they identified as hers: Taylor's fireproof pink hunting blanket was seared to the dashboard in the cab of McNeal's truck. There was no other sign of Taylor, though, and the wreckage from the crash was taken to a landfill and disposed of.  The North Carolina State Highway Patrol concluded that Alyssa Taylor was not in the tractor-trailer at the time of the crash.

The last time Taylor's whereabouts could be confirmed was on the evening of September 13; she was with McNeal in Exmore, Virginia, about an hour from her home, at the time. A police officer approached McNeal's tractor-trailer because it was parked illegally, and spoke to a woman inside it whom he later identified as Taylor. Taylor's family members viewed the officer's body cam footage from the encounter and although Taylor cannot be seen in the video, they identified the woman's voice in the video as hers.

At 1:05 a.m., someone logged into Alyssa's Facebook account from her phone. The cellular tower her phone pinged off of matched McNeal's truck's route, which had been plotted on GPS. This is the last indication of Alyssa's whereabouts; she has never been heard from again. Her phone has not been found.

McNeal's girlfriend said that McNeal stopped near Emporia, Virginia at 1:30 a.m., shortly before his death, and spoke to her there. His girlfriend heard a female voice say "Emporia" and asked who it was, and McNeal told her it was just someone from his CB radio, but the girlfriend didn't hear any static noises. McNeal stopped his tractor-trailer at the US 58 truck stop near Emporia and investigators reviewed video footage, but didn't see anything to indicate Taylor got out at that location or that anything suspicious happened.

Taylor left behind three children. She and her children lived with her mother, and her aunts all lived within a ten-mile radius; she was reportedly close to her family and they don't think she disappeared of her own free will. Her case remains unsolved.