Posted March 14, 2025

Iyana was last seen at Terry Parker High School in Jacksonville, Florida on December 19, 2018. She left campus at lunchtime, never returned to school and has never been heard from again.

Her uncle by marriage, Johnathan Quiles, is believed to have been the father of her unborn child. Iyana and other relatives had stayed at his home for weeks at a time. After she went missing, he was charged with sexual battery against another girl, also a relative.

According to court documents, the offense occurred when the fourteen-year-old victim was at Quiles's home babysitting his daughter. The offense happened in mid-December 2017. The victim told her mother about a year later, after Iyana went missing, and they reported it to the police.

While Quiles was in jail on this charge in January 2019, he reportedly told an inmate he may have gotten Iyana pregnant. Police also found a four-page love letter on Iyana's computer, which they believe was about her uncle. The letter said she wanted to run away with him.

Later that month, Quiles was named as a suspect in Iyana's disappearance. In August, he was charged with two counts of murder and one count of sexual battery in her case. Investigators believe Quiles killed Iyana at the ACE Pick-A-Part on Main Street where he worked. They think the motive was that he didn't want anyone to find out he was the father of her baby. He confessed to the murder in police interviews, reportedly admitting he had choked Iyana because she "wasn't dying right" and he didn't want to look at her.

He supposedly said he'd tried to strangle Iyana but hadn't been able to, so he shot her in the chest with a 9 mm handgun. He allegedly wrapped her body in a carpet and put it in a dumpster which he knew was going to be emptied that same day, and dumped her backpack separately. Police searched a landfill on Otis Road for weeks, looking through more than 5,000 tons of trash for Iyana's body. They didn't find it, but did find textbooks from her school, Terry Parker High School.

In September 2023, Quiles was found guilty of sexual battery, first-degree murder of Iyana, and first-degree murder of her unborn child. He could have been sentenced to death, but instead the jury elected to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the time of her disappearance, Iyana was a straight-A student; she was on track to graduate high school early and had already won multiple scholarships. Her family had accepted her pregnancy and never believed she would have run away from home. Foul play was suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.