An 18-year-old Cleveland woman has not been seen or heard from since she appeared on a Facebook video call with family in West Virginia on August 29, and police in the city's First District are now asking the public for help tracking her down. Alysia Fonner stands 5 feet tall, weighs 136 pounds, and has brown eyes, according to the description Cleveland police have circulated as the search drags into a second month.
The Cleveland Division of Police is asking the public for help locating Fonner, according to Cleveland 19 News. Fonner may have blonde hair with pink highlights or brown hair, the station reports, and she has a tattoo of butterflies and roses running up her right arm along with multiple nose piercings. Those identifying details are the main tools investigators have to work with as they try to trace her movements since the video call.
A History That Crosses State Lines
This is not the first time Fonner has gone missing. Public missing-person database records show she was previously reported missing on March 25, 2025, from Parkersburg, West Virginia, when she was 17 years old, according to Crime Solvers Central. Months before that, a September 2024 legal notice tied to a Wood County, West Virginia circuit court juvenile abuse and neglect case named Fonner as the mother of a child born in January 2023 and stated that her whereabouts were unknown at the time, as reported by the Parkersburg News & Sentinel. Together, the records paint a picture of a young woman whose location has been uncertain to authorities across two states well before she turned 18.
Why No Statewide Alert Has Gone Out
Fonner's case has not triggered any of the emergency alert systems many residents associate with missing-person cases, and there's a legal reason for that. Under Ohio Revised Code Section 5502.522, Endangered Missing Adult Alerts can only be activated by law enforcement when the missing person is 65 or older or has a mental impairment and is believed to be in immediate danger of serious bodily harm or death, per Ohio law. Guidance from the Ohio AMBER Alert Advisory Committee similarly restricts automatic cell phone emergency alerts to child abductions meeting specific criteria or qualifying endangered adults, which excludes standard missing-adult cases like Fonner's, according to the Ohio AMBER Alert program. As an 18-year-old without a reported mental impairment, Fonner does not meet the threshold for those broadcast systems, leaving detective work and public tips as the primary path forward.
That work falls to Cleveland's First District, whose territory covers the city's far West Side neighborhoods, including Edgewater, West Park, Kamm's Corners and areas near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, according to the Cleveland Community Police Commission. Anyone with information on Fonner's whereabouts is encouraged to contact Detective Bachman at 216-623-2533, or the Cleveland police non-emergency line at 216-621-1234, per the same Cleveland 19 News report.
Missing Youth Cases Across Ohio
Fonner's disappearance lands amid a statewide picture that is both reassuring and sobering. The Ohio Attorney General's Office reported in May that 19,930 total missing-person reports were filed statewide in 2025, a decrease of 1,412 cases from the year before, and that 97.8% of the state's reported missing children — 15,024 individuals — were recovered safely by year's end. A year earlier, the office had reported that Ohio law enforcement agencies logged 16,404 missing child entries into the federal National Crime Information Center database during 2024, including 8,415 runaway reports.
For families still waiting, the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation runs a 24-hour Missing Persons Unit hotline at (855) BCI-OHIO to help coordinate state resources with local departments like Cleveland's. Separately, the U.S. Marshals Service announced this month that Operation Meridian, a monthlong statewide sweep conducted throughout August across Ohio, recovered 79 reported missing and endangered youth — a reminder that Fonner's case is unfolding against a backdrop of active, ongoing efforts to locate young people across the state.
