De Soto Woman Searches for Missing Dad on TikTok

After frustrations with the police, Cameron Punjani is leading her own investigation

Written by RYAN KRULL

Cameron Punjani never had any particular interest in listening to true crime podcasts or watching true crime documentaries, much less scrolling through #truecrime social media posts. But a little more than a year ago her father disappeared and, disappointed with what she saw as police’s lax attitude toward the case, she took to TikTok to try to stop her dad’s story from being forgotten.

“I’m just not OK with not having the answers,” Cameron says. “I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, my dad went missing, I guess there’s just nothing I can do about it.’”

By day Cameron, 22, works at a dispensary in Festus. But her videos are increasingly finding a big audience, with the more recent ones regularly garnering views in the tens of thousands. They’re also leading to tips that she hopes could provide a big break in the ongoing missing-person case — and stirring up a host of amateur sleuths eager to help in her quest.

January 14, 2022, started out as usual for Cameron’s dad, 50-year-old Naushad Punjani. He left his home in De Soto and drove to St. Louis, where he clocked in at his job at a plastics manufacturer in north city. But he never came home. His family reported him missing soon thereafter.

Cameron says her frustrations with law enforcement began almost right away. A Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy came to her house to interview her, but she says she later found out that the report was never taken to a detective.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department disputes that. Grant Bissell, with the sheriff’s department, says that the case was assigned to a detective on January 20, six days after Naushad’s disappearance.

“We’ve had someone on it since days after his disappearance was reported,” Bissell says.

On the night of January 15, Cameron says that someone crashed her dad’s car in the Mark Twain neighborhood of St. Louis. The car crash occurred less than two miles from Serioplast, the plastics manufacturer where Naushad worked.

Months later, Cameron says, police in- terviewed the woman who had been behind the wheel of Naushad’s car, who said that she’d gotten the car from her cousin. But the police couldn’t talk to her cousin because he had been killed in March.

That story sounded a little too convenient to Cameron.

Another potential lead that Cameron feels wasn’t followed up on quickly enough was that not long after her dad disappeared, she started getting requests for money via Venmo from someone who had Naushad’s phone.

Bissell says that “pages and pages and pages of reports” have been compiled by a detective, with additions to the case file as recently as last month. He adds that the detective has been doing investigative work in north county and north St. Louis city, areas outside of where Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office personnel would typically operate.

Is Someone Throwing Rocks Onto I-64?

Cameron made a TikTok about the case in January 2022 when her dad first went missing. But by October she’d grown frustrated with the lack of updates coming from police, so she started making more short videos.

Cameron says that she’s motivated by the fact that her dad was in a place where voluntarily ditching the life he’d built for himself just doesn’t make any sense.

Naushad had previously been in debt, but after a year of working at Serioplast, he was back on firm financial footing. Cameron says her dad was also excited about becoming a grandfather and about Cameron’s younger brother starting college.

“He had a lot that he was looking forward to,” Cameron says.

She’s keeping an open mind about what happened to her dad and is trying not to jump to conclusions.

“The possibilities are honestly end- less,” she says. “He could very much be alive or he could have died a year ago, and I have no idea where his body is.”

As Cameron’s audience has grown, so have the tips that her videos generate.

Earlier this month, in a video that has almost 400,000 views, Cameron announced that she got a tip that her dad had been seen at a convenience store in Granite City. Cameron and a friend investigated.

Employees at the convenience store didn’t recognize Naushad’s photo, but when Cameron stopped in a bar two doors down, a server there said she’d seen Naushad just a day prior in the bar drinking coffee.

However, when Cameron managed to get a photo of the person who might be her dad, she said that the hair and jawline didn’t match. Undeterred, she updated her followers about the lead that didn’t pan out. n

Written by RYAN KRULL

Around 9:30 p.m. on February 13, 25-year-old Kayla Thompson was driving on the interstate with her parents when, just after passing under Hampton, a large chunk of concrete struck the front of her 2019 Jeep Cherokee.

Thompson’s dad was behind the wheel, and he thinks he saw a man in his mid-30s or early 40s throw the object from the overpass.

“If he had thrown it a few seconds later, it would have probably gone through the windshield and hit my dad in the face,” Thompson says.

Thompson says her Jeep was left leaking fluid, with its left blinker and horn broken.

The officer who responded to the scene said that Thompson was the fifth person to call in recent days to make a report about their car being struck by a concrete chunk on Interstate 64 near the Hampton Avenue overpass, Thompson says.

Despite eyewitness reports, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department says it is unclear if someone is throwing the concrete onto the highway, or if there is another reason for the falling rocks.

The department has set up a mobile camera at the overpass to investigate.

Another incident occurred on Super Bowl Sunday around 6 p.m. when a piece of concrete struck a red Nissan.

The concrete left a long gash in the car’s hood and a spider crack in the windshield.

The driver spoke to the RFT but asked that his name be withheld. He said that when police responded, “The officer told us that for the last week, detectives have been working there because there are reports of some people throwing things at cars from ... the Hampton and Turtle Park overpasses.”

The SLMPD has confirmed that a similar incident occurred two days prior, on February 10, when another car on I-64 was struck by a chunk of concrete near the Hampton and Kingshighway exits.

Of the man her father saw, Thompson says, “Something is going on with him mentally, and he’s just taking it out on everyone else.” Her father thought it looked like the man may have been sleeping on the overpass prior to dropping the concrete.

Thompson is a college student who also works at QuikTrip. She says she’s now on the hook for the $1,000 insurance deductible to repair her car.

“Whoever is doing this has no idea what [drivers] are actually going through and if they even have the money to afford to get their car fixed,” Thompson says.

She adds, “I don’t want another incident to happen and it gets to a point where somebody gets killed.”

Suns Out, Boobs Out

Words by JAIME LEES & RYAN KRULL

Photos by REUBEN HEMMER

Thousands of partygoers took advantage of the beautiful weather over the weekend and turned St. Louis’ Soulard neighborhood into a sea of purple, green and yellow.

People showed up in droves on Saturday for the Mardi Gras Bud Light Grand Parade, and they were all having fun in the sun. Things took a turn for the unexpected around noon when the truck pulling the St. Louis City SC float suddenly caught fire. Approximately 20 people were on the float at the time, but no injuries were reported.

So, ultimately, the spirits remainded high. Drinks were had, beads were thrown and many memories made and probably forgotten. Never change, St. Louis. n

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIQUE AND FASCINATING ASPECTS OF OUR HOME