A 20-year-old Virginia Tech student was reported missing after he suddenly vanished on Friday and has not been seen since.
Deputies with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office are searching for Johnny Roop who was last seen at his apartment complex in Merrimac sometime Friday, the university said.
Roop was expected at his parent’s home in Abingdon by 5 p.m. that day to take an online exam but he never showed, according to the school officials.
He was expected to make the roughly hour-and-40-minute drive to be there in time.
But his phone last pinged near the New River Valley Mall at 4:26 p.m. Friday, officials said.
The college student has blond hair and hazel eyes and is 6’3″ tall.
He was driving a black 2018 Toyota Camry with Virginia license plate number “TXW6643” and a Virginia Tech sticker in the back window.
A childhood friend told local NBC affiliate station, 10 News, that he got “that bad feeling in your stomach” when he heard Roop hadn’t been seen or heard from in days.
“John is not the kind of guy that just goes missing,” Isaac Childress told the station. “You have some buddies you don’t hear from in a couple days and it’s just the norm, they do their own thing, but Johnny, he is a family and friend-oriented man.”
Roop’s mother shared on Facebook that her son’s phone had been dead for at least two days which was “highly unlike him” as she pleaded for help to find him.
Childress said the situation was “not adding up.”
“So many things just unturned,” he said. “Why was he at the Christiansburg mall with his phone like 20 minutes before the test if he was leaving from Blacksburg to Abingdon at 10 o’clock in the morning? That is when his friends said that he left.”
The Montogomery County Sheriff’s Office has asked anyone who spots his vehicle or has information about his disappearance to call its investigators at 540-382-4343.
