Is her boyfriend fleeing?
High school sweethearts, Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, had set out in July in a converted van to visit national parks in the West. They got into a fight along the way, and Laundrie was alone when he returned in the van to his parents’ home in September, police said.
Exactly one year before they started their cross-country trip, Gabby Petito announced her engagement to Brian Laundrie on Instagram.
Gabby announces on Instagram that they have purchased a “garden on wheels! New van means new adventures.”
The couple had been in Blue Point, New York, where Petito is originally from, to celebrate her younger brother’s graduation from high school. They departed New York on July 2 on a planned four-month cross-country journey.
According to a Petito family attorney, the pair had gotten engaged, but postponed their wedding plans because of the coronavirus pandemic and decided to take the trip instead.
They were driving Petito’s white 2012 Ford Transit van, which, according to one of Laundrie’s posts on Instagram, they converted the interior to allow them to camp and cook meals inside of as they traveled.
According to their social media posts, the pair traveled from Florida to Kansas, Colorado, and Utah, touring and camping at several national parks and natural attractions.
