Gabby Petito’s family announced they will file a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against the Moab Police Department in Utah, for its alleged mishandling of a domestic incident between Gabby and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, while they were traveling in Utah.

Laundrie murdered Petito soon after the Moab City Police Department “failed to adequately respond to reports and evidence of domestic violence between Brian and Gabby,” the notice of claim states. 

Petito, 22-years-old, went missing in late August, and was found dead at a campsite in Wyoming on September 19, 2021. She died of “blunt-force injuries to the head and neck, with manual strangulation,” the coroner ruled. 

“While the full evidence has not yet been made public, when it is released, it will clearly show that if the officers had been properly trained and followed the law, Gabby would still be alive today,” the family’s lawyer, James McConkie, said in a statement.

Moab officers had responded to an alleged violent interaction between Petito and Laundrie on August 12, 2021, three weeks before Gabby’s death. 

The couple told police that they had an argument in Moab in which Petito slapped Laundrie, a police report and officer body-camera footage released by the Moab Police Department shows. The footage shows Petito, crying and distraught, telling Moab police that Laundrie grabbed her face and her arm during their argument. 

In a 911 call to dispatchers at the Grand County Sheriff’s Office, a witness said that he saw a man slapping a girl. 

Lawyers for Gabby’s family say they have a bloody photo of her that shows that Brian violently attacked her in the Moab incident. 

Moab officers treated the incident as a “mental health crisis” and recommended that the couple separate for the night. Petito’s family says that the incident should have been treated as domestic violence-related as opposed to “disorderly conduct,” which was how the police categorized it.

Another Petito family attorney, Brian Stewart, said in a statement,  “Due to lack of training and access to critical domestic violence resources, the officers failed to properly investigate the reported domestic assault and, thus failed to fully appreciate or respond to Gabby’s life-threatening situation.”

Brian Laundrie, 23, died by suicide and was found in October 2021 at a Florida nature preserve. He claimed responsibility for Gabby’s death in a notebook.