There is nothing quite like the bond between siblings. On the surface, it may seem like endless bickering and teasing, but for many, it’s the most special relationship in their lives.
That was certainly true for Kevin Nguyen and Lian Yankey. “He just meant everything to me,” Lian said.
But for the last six years, a piece of Lian’s heart has been missing: her brother, Kevin.
Dateline spoke to Lian as she recounted the night her life changed forever.
It was the night of December 8, 2018. Kevin was out drinking at the Brass Rail Bar in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Around 2:00 a.m. on December 9, Lian received a phone call from her brother asking for a ride home. “At 2:00 in the morning, it sounded like he was laughing and talking to somebody,” Lian said. “But he called me to come pick him up.”
Lian agreed, but before she could get out the door, her mother stopped her and told her she would go instead. “She went to go find him, but by the time she went, he was nowhere to be found,” Lian said.
Lian says she immediately went back to sleep. What happened next still haunts her. “A lot of people don’t know this because it kind of— it still hurts. But he called again. But I missed the call,” Lian said. “And I feel like, if I would have picked up, maybe we could have done something.”
Lian told Dateline she received the second phone call about 30 minutes after the first one. She estimates it would have taken her mother about 20-30 minutes to drive from their home to the bar where Kevin said he was that night.
Shortly after that second call was made to Lian’s phone, she got a third call. This one woke her up.
But this time, it did not come from Kevin. It was from her mother. “She’s like, ‘Where’s your brother? Where is he at?’ Like, ‘He should be at the bar,’’’ Lian remembered thinking. “I gave her the directions and everything. I said, ‘He should be at that bar.’”
Lian says her mother searched the area for a while, in her pajamas, before eventually returning home.
“My mom and I were like, ‘He’ll be home the next day,’” Lian said.
But Kevin did not return home the next day.
“Then it started kicking in when he wasn’t picking up his phone,” Lian said. Kevin always answered when their mother called. “It started kicking in that something might be wrong.”
Lian called the police to report her brother missing.
According to the Fort Wayne Police Department’s website, “On the evening of Saturday, December 8, 2018, Kevin Nguyen was at the Brass Rail Bar, located at 1121 Broadway, Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he may have been involved in an altercation.”
The site states that “Nguyen was later seen on surveillance video at Arby’s, 610 West Jefferson Boulevard, at 0240 hours” and that “Kevin has not been seen or heard from since then.”
The FWPD states that while Kevin is known to wear glasses, “a pair of glasses was found in the parking lot of the bar, suggesting Kevin does not have his glasses with him.”
The FWPD advises anyone seeking additional information to go to Kevin’s NAMUS entry.
Dateline reached out to the Fort Wayne Police Department for an update on Kevin’s case, but has not heard back.
Over the past six years, Kevin’s grandmother, Dee Campbell, has been leading the charge to find answers in her grandson’s disappearance.
Dee told Dateline that through speaking with law enforcement, Kevin’s social circle, people who were at the bar that night, and social media, she was able to gather some information about the events of that night. She says people who were at the bar have told her Kevin was acting unruly that evening, got into an altercation, and was kicked out of the bar. It is unclear exactly what the altercation was over or who else was involved.
“He cleared his tab at just a couple of minutes after midnight and, at some point, Kevin was kicked out -- physically removed from the bar,” Dee said. However, he was apparently able to make his way back into the bar a second time before being kicked out again. It was after the second time Kevin was removed from the bar that Dee believes he dropped his glasses in the parking lot. According to Dee, Kevin then walked to the nearby Arby’s, where he is seen on security video in the early morning hours of December 9.
Dee says Kevin’s glasses were found by a family member searching the area in the days after Kevin went missing. “They were all searching that area, trying to find Kevin in the parking lot. My daughter found the frame of his glasses,” Dee said. “And it looks like the glasses had been ran over back there, and the lens popped out, and the frame had gotten bent slightly.”
While exactly what happened that night is unknown, one thing is certain. Kevin’s family misses him dearly.
“That was my best friend,” Lian Yankey told Dateline. She and Kevin loved spending quality time together. Whatever Kevin wanted to do, Lian would always be there. “It was always a ‘yes’ with him because he — he was my best friend,” she said. “When I had my first heartbreak, a lot of girls would go to their dad or their mom. When I had my first, like, mega heartbreak, I ran straight to my brother, bawling my eyes out. And he just dropped everything he was doing just to comfort me,” Lian remembered.
Lian and Kevin’s father, Lance, passed away in 2024. Lian says she feels hurt that her father didn’t get to find out what happened to Kevin. “But I think what hurts my heart the most is my mom– because she’s just losing everybody,” Lian said. “And she -- she can’t sleep. She lost her husband; she lost her son.”
‘Grandma Dee,’ as Kevin used to call her, refuses to give up. “I have made it my mission as long as I’m alive to never let Kevin be forgotten,” Dee Campbell said. “As long as I can breathe, and as long as I can type and print flyers, Kevin’s not going to be forgotten. We’re going to find him.”
Dee is an administrator of the Facebook group “HELP Bring Kevin Nguyen Home!!” where updates and information about Kevin’s case are posted.
Kevin is 6’0” and 160-180 lbs. He has short black hair, and brown eyes. He also has a birth mark on his inner right thigh. He would be 31 years old today.
Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Brian Martin of the Fort Wayne Police Department at (260) 427-1369 or email [email protected].
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