Breck Goodman said she broke down in tears when she learned of Mollie Tibbetts’ murder. “I started sobbing.”
A friend of the missing Iowa girl, Mollie Tibbetts, who was found dead on Aug. 21, said she started to break down the moment she found out her friend was dead.
Breck Goodman said during a vigil in honor of Tibbetts at the University of Iowa that students started classes at the college on Aug. 20.
“I woke up and I thought to myself this sucks, this sucks, I was not able to start school with one of my best friends,” she said. “And then I woke up the next morning from text messages from my friends, from my mom and dad, from my brother saying how sorry they were and that if I needed to I could call them.”
Goodman said she was confused and rushed to check social media.
“I was confused first at first and then I just got this rotten feeling in my stomach. And I got on my phone. I checked Twitter, I checked the news apps and my biggest fear come [sic] true that they had found Mollie,” Goodman said.
The next few moments was when the news hit her and she started crying.
“I just remember looking in the mirror, kind of just processing the whole thing, thinking this can’t be real, this can’t be real. And then as soon as the first glance in the mirror, I just broke down because there I was without her and I just started sobbing,” she said.
Tibbetts’s brother, Jake, attended the vigil on Wednesday, Aug. 22 and addressed the assembled crowd.
“We’re never going to have that since of normalcy again,” he said, reported KWWL. It was the first time he’d spoken since his sister was confirmed dead.
“We’re going to miss her dearly but, to be honest, what made her so special is she was just like anyone standing here,” he added. “She loved to run. She loved Harry Potter. She loved the hawks. She loved her family. She was goofy. She was clumsy.”
He then asked the crowd to remember how the community had come together to search for Tibbetts and support her family and friends.
“Remember this as a time that the country came together for one girl. One girl that loved everyone. One girl that loved everything and wanted the best for everyone. Don’t remember this as the time that someone made a very poor decision and took a girl away,” he said.
Tibbetts’s body was discovered by investigators in a remote cornfield in Brooklyn, the 20-year-old’s hometown and place of residence while on summer break from college.
Illegal immigrant Christhian Rivera, 24, led investigators to the body after describing how he’d chased Tibbetts while she was jogging and “blacked out” when she threatened to call the police .
Rivera has been charged with first-degree murder .
A funeral for Tibbetts was planned for Sunday, Aug. 26.
From NTD.tv
