A man said in a witness statement that Gabby Petito asked Brian Laundrie why he was so "mean" to her in a dispute prior to her disappearance.
Gabby, 22, was confirmed dead on Wednesday after she disappeared while traveling across the country with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, who is now a person of interest in the case, CBS News reports.
The witness, identified only as Chris, said in a statement filed by police investigating the case that he saw the couple having an argument in Moab, Utah on August 12, as per the Daily Mail.
He went on to inform police officers about what he saw:
In the video below, an officer discusses the ongoing search for Laundrie, who disappeared after Gabby was reported as a missing person:"They were talking aggressively at each other and something seemed off. At one point they were sort of fighting over a phone, I think the male took the female's phone.
"It appeared that he didn’t want her in the white van. He got into the driver's seat and she followed him. At one point she was punching him in the arm and/or face and trying to get into the van."
Chris said he saw the young couple eventually get back into the van and that's when he heard Gabby say to Brian: "Why do you have to be so mean?"
"I wasn't sure how serious this was - it was hard to tell if it was sort of play fighting, but from my point of view something definitely didn't seem right," the witness said.
Chris said that at one point he even saw Gabby punch Brian in an attempt to get back inside her van.
Pictured below is an arrest warrant for Laundrie.
Following the report of a dispute between Brian and Gabby, they were located by police who decided to separate them for a night to give them a chance to cool off.
Other witnesses have also come forward to help investigators with the case. Jessica Schultz said that she saw Laundrie alone at the Spread Creek campsite in Wyoming on August 26. Then on August 27, and potentially on the 28th, she only saw his van.
"He was just acting weird," she told The San Francisco Chronicle. "You know, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, your hackles go up when you see something that's out of the ordinary. I'm pretty sure he got out of the van to like look around or something."
"There's definitely nobody in that passenger seat; like he definitely doesn't have a girl in there," she added.
