Parents of Gabby Petito File $50M Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Utah Police

Gabby Petito’s parents have launched a lawsuit against police officers with the Moab Police Department, seeking $50 million dollars for her wrongful death.

Petito was reported missing on September 11th, 2021 after she failed to return home from a road trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie.

During their trip, the couple stopped in Moab, Utah. On August 12th, they got into a public domestic altercation where a witness reportedly accused Laundrie of hitting Petito. Moab police were called to handle the situation.

Moab police advised the couple to spend the night apart and sent them on their way. Just over a month later, on September 19th, Petito would be found strangled to death near the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.

Laundrie would evade police and later kill himself before police would have the opportunity to interview him about Petito’s death. He left behind a cryptic notebook that alleges he “ended her life” after Petito had a serious fall along a hiking route.

The notebook, found next to Laundrie’s body in a nature reserve in Sarasota, Florida, read, “I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked. I was in shock.”

Now, almost a year after her disappearance, her parents, Joseph Petito and Nicole Schmidt along with their respective spouses, are still searching for answers. On Monday, they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Moab police alleging that they failed to intervene correctly during the couple’s domestic violence incident.

The suit says that Petito’s death was caused by the police’s “negligent failure to understand and enforce the law of the State of Utah, to investigate Brian’s self-evidently false claims during their interviews with him, to properly train the officers to investigate domestic violence situations, and to properly assess the circumstances, including to identity Brian as the true primary aggressor.”

The suit names over 10 officers involved in the incident and says her death was “caused by their wrongful acts or neglect.”