The aforementioned 911 caller had told the dispatcher, according to the audio released to the media: “We went by and the gentleman was slapping the girl…They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit -la, jumped into the car, and they left.”
Another witness at the scene, identified only as Chris, wrote in a statement to police, per CNN, that the two “were talking aggressively to each other.” Chris said he thought he heard Petito say in the laundry, “Why do you have to be so mean?”
Hulls, a Park Service ranger and visitor and resource protection supervisor at Arches National Park, admitted he had a bad feeling about the overall situation between Petito and Laundrie.
“I was probably more honest with her than I should have been,” Hulls said Deseret News. “I was pleading with her to reevaluate the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying that this was an opportunity for her to find another path, to make a change in her life. She had a lot of anxiety about being away from him, I honestly thought that if anything was going to change it would be after they got home to Florida.”
And then he heard that a body had been found, matching the description of the missing woman.
“Honestly, I haven't looked at my body camera footage from that night,” the ranger said. “It's hard to think about it now because I feel like I could have said more to help her. It's hard not to second guess myself, and I wish I could say more, or I wish I could have found the right words to— the belief that she deserved more.”
