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A Florida man hiking the Appalachian Trail claims he saw Brian Laundrie driving in a white van around 12:30 a.m. ET on Saturday in Tennessee, near the North Carolina border.
Dennis Davis, who spoke to a number of media outlets on Saturday including Fox News Digital on two occasions, said he did not initially register that the driver could be Laundrie, but after the meeting he searched photos of the fugitive sought by sample. card fraud charges, and he then felt convinced enough to call the FBI twice, as well as 911 operators in Tennessee and North Carolina.
“There’s no question about that. It was Brian Laundrie I was talking to. 100%. No doubt in my mind,” Davis said of the meeting after looking at both a portrait and a profile picture of Laundrie on her phone.
Waterville Road in Hartford, Tennessee (Google Maps)
(Google Maps)
Laundrie is on the run and is wanted on bank fraud charges after his 22-year-old fiancee Gabby Petito was found dead in Wyoming last month.
Davis and other hikers were going to leave a car at the north end of the application trail and he was going to sleep at the trailhead on Friday night. He accidentally passed a parking lot near the trailhead and was about to make a U-turn onto Waterville Road when “a vehicle approached” from behind him and flashed his headlights as if signaling Davis that he could complete his trip. turn around.
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After making a U-turn, he was heading back towards the van when the man driving him took his hand out of the vehicle.
“I pulled over to the vehicle,” Davis explained. “… I rolled down my window and started talking to the gentleman. I could tell right away that something was wrong with him.
His immediate thought was that the driver was “drugged at first”, but after giving it some thought, Davis said he “looked mentally dejected”. Davis added that the driver “didn’t look dirty at all.”
The driver then told Davis he was lost and was trying to get to California after arguing with his girlfriend.
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“He said my girlfriend and I had a fight, and man, I love her, and she called me, and I need to go to California to see her,” Davis explained. Davis then told the driver to take I-40 West, but the driver said no and he preferred to stay on Waterville Road near the Pigeon River.
“He said, ‘No, I think this road we’re on – I’m going to take him to California,” Davis said.
Brian Laundrie (North Port Police Department)
The hiker thought about the encounter afterward as he resumed driving and began to wonder if this was Laundrie.
“So I got to the next place I was going to park and opened my phone and started looking at pictures. And when I was talking to her, what really stood out to me was : he had a very full but black beard and mustache, short, very thick, black. And so, when I parked my car and posted the picture of him on the internet … and there was this beard and this mustache, ”Davis said.
At that point, the hiker was 95% sure he had seen Laundrie and called the FBI. When he hung up on the phone with the FBI, he looked at another profile photo of Laundrie and then felt 100% convinced that he had spotted the fugitive, in which case he called the FBI a second time, as well as the Tennessee and North Carolina police.
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As of Sunday morning, neither the FBI nor the police had contacted Davis. The FBI, nor several police departments and sheriff’s offices in the Tennessee and North Carolina areas described by Davis, responded to Fox News’ inquiries.
People have reported numerous potential laundry sightings across the country as its fate remains unknown in the high-profile case. Last month, people reported possible sightings in Mobile, Alabama, where a man was found dead near a local Walmart store, and in surveillance camera footage from Baker, Okaloosa County, Florida.
A man who informed Fox News of a since-debunked potential sighting of Brian Laundrie in New Jersey last month said that “it was like pulling teeth to get law enforcement to act on it. [sighting], “and that some officials were” rude “on the phone.
Xander Mcdouall, co-owner of a team of bounty hunters called the Predator Hunter Nation, confirmed to Fox News that they spoke to Davis and were searching the area he described.
The Appalachian Trail. (iStock)
Investigators working with Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman also looks at portions of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina as they continue their search for Laundrie. Lyssa Chapman, Chapman’s daughter, said her father’s team “were working to confirm” several new leads in a tweet on Saturday.
As the manhunt For Laundrie Continues, people have claimed to have seen the 23-year-old avid hiker in Watauga County, North Carolina, according to several reports. Users of a private Facebook page, Appalachian Classifieds, described how people “reported seeing Brian Laundrie in Boone, NC,” according to the Watauga Democrat.
The Watauga County Sheriff’s Office said local FOX 46 branch, “We were investigating these allegations, but nothing was verified.” Sheriff Len Hagaman told Fox News the department “only monitors social media reruns – nothing validated.”
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The Appalachian Trail as a whole is “the longest hiking trail in the world, stretching from Maine to Georgia,” according to the Conservatory of the Appalachian Trail. It stretches for more than 2,193 miles and spans 14 states. In North Carolina alone, the Appalachian Trail stretches 96.4 miles and reaches elevations of up to 5,498 feet.
Laundrie and Petito both reportedly hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail. In March, Petito shared a Instagram photography with a geotag for the Appalachian Trail in Georgia.
And a woman who says she was one of Petito’s best friends, Rose Davis, said PEOPLE that Laundrie “lived alone in the Appalachians for months”.
Laundrie and Petito were cruising the country in a Ford Transit van over the summer before Laundrie returned home to North Port, Fla. On September 1 in the van without Petito. Petito’s parents reported his disappearance 10 days later on September 11. Laundrie’s parents reported Laundrie’s disappearance on September 17, but said the last time they saw him was September 14.
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After Petito’s missing persons report was filed on September 11, Laundrie did not cooperate with the police investigation, officials said. The laundries’ lawyer issued a statement on September 14, in which he announced that he had advised his clients to stay “in the background”. The family revealed three days later that they had not seen him since September 14.
Petito’s body was discovered near Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming September 19. A Teton County coroner has ruled on the death of a homicide but has not yet announced the cause.
Fox News’s Stephanie Pagones and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
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