During Brian Laundrie Search, North Port Police Paid Nearly $200K On Overtime: Report

NORTH PORT, FL — During the search for Brian Laundrie, a person of interest in the strangulation death of his fiancée, Gabby Petito, whose body was found Sept. 19 in Wyoming, North Port police spent nearly $200,000 on overtime, WINK News reported.

Laundrie and Petito, both Long Island, New York, natives living with his family in Florida, were traveling across the country visiting national parks this summer when she disappeared at the end of August. Her body was found weeks later near Grand Teton National Park.

Laundrie returned home alone to Florida in Petito's van Sept. 1 and was reported missing by his parents Sept. 17.

His skeletal remains, including a portion of his skull, were found Oct. 20 in the Carlton Reserve and the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, along with several of his belongings, after more than a month of searching for him. The FBI used dental records to match the remains to Laundrie.

No cause of death could be determined after an Oct. 22 autopsy, and Laundrie's bones were sent to a forensic anthropologist for further examination.

Through a records request, WINK learned that North Port police spent about $195,000 on overtime in September and October.

That’s nearly three times more than what the department paid in overtime during the same time period the year before. In September 2020, police paid about $67,000 for overtime hours, according to reports.

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North Port police officials previously admitted to making mistakes during their investigation into Petito’s disappearance, as they kept tabs on Laundrie before he fled his family’s home.

The city's public information officer, Josh Taylor, has said that North Port police mistook Laundrie's mother for him while surveilling the family, allowing Brian Laundrie to slip away from their Florida home Sept. 13.

The spokesperson said Laundrie left his family's home in his parents' Ford Mustang Sept. 13 to go hiking at the Carlton Reserve. Days later, on Sept. 15, police thought they saw him return with the car, but it was actually his mother.

Taylor added that the mother and son are "kind of built similarly" and his mother was wearing a baseball cap when she brought the car home from where her son had left it near Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park.

During a Sept. 15 news conference, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison said investigators knew Laundrie's whereabouts. When his parents reported him missing, police were surprised to learn it had been days since they had seen their son.

"When the family reported him (missing) on Friday (Sept. 17). That was certainly news to us that they had not seen him," Taylor said. "We thought that we (had) seen Brian initially come back into that home on that Wednesday."

Garrison spoke at length about the mistakes made while surveilling the Laundrie family during a South County Tiger Bay Club luncheon in Venice Oct. 29, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

“As a leader, what do I do?" the police chief said. "Do I not tell the public what's going on? Do we conceal it? Cover it up?"

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He added, "No, people want open, transparency and honesty from their law enforcement officials. Yes, we made a mistake. It was human error, but I still stand behind my team."

Garrison told the audience his team watching the Laundrie family's home reported seeing Brian Laundrie enter the house.

Because of this, he believed Petito's fiancé was at home when he spoke at the Sept. 15 news conference. When he learned Laundrie was missing, "there was nobody more surprised about that than me," he said.

When North Port police officers joined the FBI to meet with Laundrie's parents Sept. 17, "I sat with the deputy chief in my office, hoping that they would find Brian hiding in a back bedroom," Garrison added. "I was hoping, maybe it was a ploy. It wasn't."