A person who called 911 in August, days before Gabby Petito was last seen, reported a domestic dispute between her and her fiancé and partner of two and a half years, Brian Laundrie.
A recording of the 911 call from Aug. 12 from a man described what he believed was an altercation between Petito and Laundrie on Main Street near the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab, Utah.
'A Gentleman was Slapping the Girl'
The man said the two people involved in the incident were in a white van with a Florida license plate, which Petito and Laundrie had used to travel across the country.
"We drove by him, a gentleman was slapping the girl," the caller said, adding that the two people "ran up and down the sidewalk" before the man "proceeded to hit her." The caller said the two, later identified as Petito and Laundrie, got back into the van and drove off. Listen to the recording below:
Bodycam Footage
The call led to Moab police pulling the couple over in bodycam footage that was released following her disappearance. The video showed a visibly distraught Petito sobbing as she told the responding officer they had been "fighting" and that she was struggling with her mental health, as previously reported. After conducting their investigation that day, officers concluded this wasn't a domestic assault as much as that of a mental health crisis.
Petito, 22, grabbed national headlines after she went missing following a cross-country trip with Laundrie, 23, who returned home without her. She was last seen on Aug. 24 when she checked out of a Salt Lake City hotel with Laundrie. She was reported missing by her family on Sept. 11. Petito and Laundrie were documenting their cross-country experiences as "van-lifers" across the US on a YouTube channel called 'Nomadic Statik.
On Sunday, FBI officials said they found human remains "consistent with the description" of the missing New York woman in Teton County, Wyoming. Laundrie is a "person of interest" in the case. According to North Port Police, he returned to Florida alone in the van on Sept. 1, 10 days before Petito was reported missing. Laundrie's whereabouts are unknown, as of Friday, and family members say they haven't seen him since Tuesday, according to North Port police spokesperson Josh Taylor.
