SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, April 8, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — Attorneys for the family of murder victim Gabby Petito are filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the Moab Police Department, and the officers who stopped Petito and fiancé Brian Laundrie after a domestic abuse call reporting Laundrie had been seen striking Petito.
Police stopped the couple on Aug. 12, 2021 and interviewed them before separating them for the night, then allowing the Florida residents to continue their cross country road trip. After the body of Petito, 22, was found in Wyoming on Sept. 19, the medical examiner said she had died of strangulation three to four weeks prior, just a matter of days after the Moab encounter with police.
When Laundrie’s body was found on Oct. 20 after flood waters receded at a Florida nature preserve, a journal found with him stated he had killed his Petito, the FBI announced. Laundrie, 23, died from suicide, the medical examiner determined.
Petito’s parents and step-parents are seeking $50 million in damages, according to attorneys Parker & McConkie.
“The Moab City Police Department has neglected its duty to provide the training and resources its officers need to do their job,” said James McConkie, an attorney with Salt Lake City-based law firm Parker & McConkie, in a news release. “This is an institutional failure plain and simple.”
McConkie said evidence in the case will “clearly show that if the officers had been properly trained and followed the law, Gabby would still be alive today.”
Moab Police officer Daniel Robbins, who is named in the lawsuit, wrote in a report after encountering Petito and Laundrie, that domestic violence did not seem to be the main issue.
“After evaluating the totality of the circumstances, I do not believe the situation escalated to the level of a domestic assault as much as that of a mental health crisis,” he wrote, adding that he determined “the most appropriate course of action would be to help separate the parties for the night so they could reset their mental states without interference from one another.”
At a news conference Monday, attorney Brian Stewart said the purpose of the lawsuit is to raise awareness and education regarding domestic violence, to help protect victims, “and to help make sure that our governmental institutions are are held to account and that they are given the resources and training that they need to do their jobs in the effective way … that protects the most vulnerable members of our society and will prevent tragedies such as this one from happening again.
“Our purpose in filing the lawsuit, and the family wants to be clear, is not to punish individual officers, but is to honor the efforts of dedicated police officers. And while it is tough to do, we feel a responsibility to support them by demanding that changes needed to help them do their job better will be will be accomplished we believe that the only effective way to correct these problems is to hold our institutions accountable for their failures, including in law enforcement.”
Moab police are declining comment due to the pending lawsuit.
Petito’s mother, Nicole Schmidt, said at the news conference that she had viewed the body camera footage released by the Moab Police Department after her daughter was reported missing.
“Watching it is very painful,” Schmidt said. “I wanted to jump to the screen and rescue her. That’s that’s all I can really say about that.”
See one of the videos below. Read more of Gephardt Daily’s extensive coverage of the case here.
