On November 17, 2019, Marshal Iwaasa drove two hours from Calgary, Alberta where he lived, to his hometown of Lethbridge to visit his mother. At 11 pm, Marshal hugged his mother goodbye. He told her he needed to retrieve something from a storage unit he shared with his sister, Paige. The 26-year-old planned to return home to Calgary afterward.
We know Marshal made it to the storage unit in the Northside Industrial area between Sherring and Churchill 15 minutes away from his mother’s home.
What we don’t know is what happened next, or why.
In order to access the storage unit after hours, the main entrance requires a code. The system showed Marshal was denied access several times. He eventually gave up and decided to wait for the business to open at 6 am.
Marshal left the storage unit at 8:30 am.
It’s unclear why Marshal’s code didn’t work or why he spent two and a half hours in the storage unit. Marshal never told his mother exactly what he had to retrieve and bizarrely, Paige reported that nothing was actually missing.
Marshal was reported missing when loved ones were unable to contact him. An investigation quickly determined that he never made it home to Calgary.
It wasn’t until November 23, five harrowing days later, that hikers stumbled upon a burned-out truck 1,200 km away at the trailhead to the Brian Waddington Hut, an extremely rural area just outside of Pemberton, B.C.
The truck, Marshal’s dark blue 2009 GMC Sierra, had been stripped and there were several items scattered about including his passport, clothing, three old cell phones, and two gaming consoles — the investigation later determined that the consoles did not belong to Marshal. His backpack, laptop, contact lenses, solution, wallet, and current cellphone were nowhere to be found.
The remote location is a densely wooded area with rough terrain that can only be accessed with 4-wheel drive. Before his disappearance, Marshal complained that his 4-wheel drive didn’t work.
The drive from Lethbridge to B.C. where the truck was found can take anywhere from 12 to 16 hours. Marshal was not seen on CCTV footage at any gas stations along any of the four routes he could have taken despite the fact he would have needed to fill up at some point during the long drive.
Unfortunately, local authorities refuse to test the truck, the items scattered nearby, or the contents of the storage unit for fingerprints or DNA since Marshal’s disappearance is being treated as a missing persons case.
Following his disappearance, loved ones discovered that Marshal had dropped out of university. He last accessed his bank account on November 15th, two days before he vanished, and his phone was disconnected in early November.
Was Marshal really the person behind the wheel, or did someone else drive his truck to B.C. where he reportedly didn’t have relatives or connections of any kind? What did Marshal need from the storage unit? Did he truly forget the code or was someone else attempting to access it? These are just a few of the many unanswered questions that remain more than two and a half years later.
A petition requesting the case be handled as a criminal investigation rather than missing persons investigation can be located here. If you have any information, contact Lethbridge Police at 403-328-4444 or submit a tip anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
