A Florida judge on Thursday ordered the estate of Brian Laundrie to pay $3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of his fiancee, Gabby Petito, whom officials say Laundrie admitted to killing.
A trial scheduled for December will no longer take place after Sarasota County Circuit Judge Hunter Carroll signed off on the settlement.
“The Petito family lost their daughter and they were also denied the opportunity to confront her killer,” said Patrick Reilly, an attorney for the family. “No amount of money is sufficient to compensate the Petito family for the loss of their daughter, Gabby, at the hands of Brian Laundrie.”
Laundrie’s estate does not have anywhere near $3 million, but any money the family receives will go to the Gabby Petito Foundation, established to help locate missing people and curb domestic violence.
Petito’s parents, Joseph Petito and Nicole Schmidt, “wish to turn their personal tragedy into a positive,” Reilly said.
“It is their hope that Gabby’s foundation will bring these important issues into the forefront of the public eye to the benefit of all our communities,” Reilly said.
On July 2, 2021, the 22-year-old Petito departed her native Long Island, New York, for a cross-country vacation with her fiance Laundrie. Her family grew concerned when Laundrie returned alone to his parents’ home in North Port, Florida, on Sept. 1.
Petito’s family reported her missing days later, launching a massive search effort that ended with her body being found Sept. 19 at a campground near Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming.
Petito’s cause of death was later ruled to be homicide by strangulation. In January, the FBI said Laundrie confessed in his notebook to killing Petito.
Laundrie and his parents quickly left together to go camping at Fort De Soto Park, south of St. Petersburg, after he returned from the road trip with Petito. But Brian Laundrie never returned from the camping outing, and after months of speculation about his whereabouts, he was discovered dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on Oct. 20
The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in May, claimed Laundrie intentionally killed Petito during their summer travels. As a result, her parents “incurred funeral and burial expenses, and they have suffered a loss of care and comfort, and suffered a loss of probable future companionship, society and comfort,” the lawsuit asserted.
The family sought at least $30,000.
Petito’s family filed a separate negligence suit against Laundrie’s parents, Christopher and Roberta Laundrie, in March, accusing them of failing to come forward during the search for their daughter despite knowing she was already dead. They further alleged the Laundries helped Brian conceal Gabby’s murder and were arranging for him to leave the country before his death.
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