The family of Gabby Petito filed a lawsuit against a police officer who questioned Petito two weeks before her death, stating that he was “fundamentally biased” against her.
The lawsuit was filed based on a claim a woman made alleging that officer Eric Pratt threatened her after their relationship ended while he was the police chief in a Utah town, according to Fox News. She said Pratt told her he’d smash her with a crowbar if she went public with details of their affair, which took place in 2017.
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“He has no business being a f****** cop,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told the outlet.
She never filed a complaint due to his standing in the department, and she is not named in the lawsuit. However, Pratt resigned in 2017, at about the same time the woman brought her allegations to the mayor, the report said.
She said she reached out to Petito’s parents, Nichole Schmidt and Joseph Petito, after she heard that Pratt had since been promoted to detective and a school resource officer in Moab, the Utah city where Pratt questioned Petito.
Petito’s parents believe that the Moab officers failed to understand basic warning signs of domestic violence that indicated Petito could be at risk for escalating harm, according to their lawyers. The parents seek a jury trial and damages for Petito’s funeral as well as the family’s pain and suffering and lost wages.
“The allegations made against Officer Pratt, that he harassed and threatened to kill a former girlfriend, are deeply troubling but may explain why he handled the investigation in such a biased manner and failed to protect Gabby,” attorney Brian Stewart said. “These allegations and other misconduct by Pratt should have been disqualifying for employment [at] Moab City Police Department.”
Pratt left the Moab Police Department for some time in 2019 for a domestic violence-related arrest, but charges were eventually dropped and the record expunged, the report said.
The parents are arguing in their lawsuit that Moab police should have intervened to protect their daughter and taken her concerns seriously after a witness saw Petito being hit by her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie.
Instead of filing charges for domestic violence, according to Utah law, the officers let the couple go with a warning and chose to separate them, one mistake among many that an outside investigation determined the officers made, according to reports.
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Petito was killed a month after the incident in Moab after she was strangled to death. Laundrie, who died by suicide, claimed responsibility for Petito’s death in a notebook.
Along with Pratt, other defendants named in the lawsuit are former Moab Police Chief Bret Edge, former Assistant Chief Braydon Palmer, and officer Daniel Robbins, who initiated the stop.
