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Family members of a 22-year-old woman whose boyfriend admitted to killing her last year have filed a wrongful death suit against the Moab police department, claiming their negligence led to her death weeks later.
The lawsuit filed on Thursday is the latest development in the high-profile case around Gabby Petito’s death. What began as a missing person case last summer rode a wave of true crime obsession to become a social media sensation, drawing amateur online sleuthers and the kind of worldwide attention that can help authorities locate missing people.
Petito and her boyfriend, 23-year-old Brian Laundrie, were stopped by police officers in Moab, Utah last summer but were ultimately not cited for domestic violence amid signs of distress and their own statements about physical conflict. Petito’s body was later found on the edge of Grand Teton national park in Wyoming after being strangled. Laundrie was the only person ever identified by law enforcement as a person of interest and was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after returning alone to his parents’ home in Florida.
The contrast between the cheerful facade on display on Petito’s widely followed Instagram account, where she chronicled her cross-country trip in a van to tens of thousands of followers, and the darker reality of domestic violence she was experiencing in the lead-up to her death captivated millions and sparked an unprecedented national conversation about dating violence.
