On August 12, 2021, police officers in Moab, Utah, responded to what they later described as a “domestic problem” between two young people, which it later emerged were Gabby Petitio and Brian Laundrie. The incident later became headline news, with the police report written at the time, along with video footage of the couple’s interaction with officers, giving an eerie insight into their relationship prior to the deadly events that would come after.
As the police report made clear, that day they intervened in what was a physical confrontation between Petito and Laundrie after a member of the public spotted the latter slapping the former as they stood on the sidewalk before driving away. The police caught up to the vehicle — the onlooker had noted the Florida license plate — and found Petito in tears.
She told the officer questioning her, who later reported that Petito was confused and emotional, that she was struggling with her obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that she had panicked when Laundrie wouldn’t let her back into the van. “He told me I needed to calm down, but I’m perfectly calm,” she said. The officer convinced the couple, who said they didn’t want to press any charges, to spend the night apart cooling off. Though the couple’s social media channels would go on to paint a picture of an ideal vacation, they continued to argue violently, with a “commotion” in a Wyoming restaurant on August 27 also drawing attention from the public.
