GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A woman says the man accused of killing 16-year-old Susana Morales broke into her home to steal her underwear in 2018.
The woman, who doesn’t want to be identified said she was his neighbor on Samuel Drive in Norcross and they went to Berkmar High School together.
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“I didn’t want him looking at me. I didn’t want him talking to me,” the woman said.
She shared her story with Channel 2′s Matt Johnson during Channel 2 Action News at 4:00 p.m.
That’s how the former officer made the woman feel after she says he broke into her home in 2018 and stole her underwear when she was 16.
The former Doraville police officer, Miles Bryant, 22, is now in jail for allegedly kidnapping and murdering Morales last July.
“It was specifically like, my underwear. So it’s just like, why would he need that?”, the woman said.
One day she says her family reviewed surveillance camera footage and they recognized Bryant at their home.
We see him climbing our porch. That’s when I realized that even underwear that I’ve had for, you know, a couple of months already. Like they were gone,” the woman explained.
“Maybe if I would have filed the report, he wouldn’t have had the chance to be a police officer and he wouldn’t have been able to even gain Susana’s trust,” the woman said.
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Johnson has been following the investigation into Morales’ death and Bryant’s arrest.
Morales vanished in July of 2022 as she walked back to her Gwinnett home. Her skeletal remains were found 20 miles from her home off of Highway 316 on the Gwinnett County/Barrow County line earlier this month.
On Feb. 13, Gwinnett police charged Bryant, the ex-police officer, with concealing Morales’ death and falsely reporting a crime. On Wednesday, Gwinnett police announced that they have upgraded the charges.
They don’t have the video anymore. The woman has been in contact with Gwinnett County police and a detective is trying to locate it elsewhere.
The family never filed a police report.
“We went next door, and we spoke to his parents, and from there they kind of, you know, talked us out of making a police report,” the woman said.
In February 2018, a police report shows another Berkmar classmate said Bryant tried to break into her home.
“The homeowner, in that case, did not want to wish to prosecute. And so that case ultimately was resolved,” Gwinnett County Chief J.D. McClure said.
Both cases make some wonder what may have happened if Bryant had an arrest on his record before he could become a police officer.
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Police revealed that a gun registered to Bryant was found near Morales’ remains. Bryant reported his weapon had been stolen around 11 a.m. on July 27, 2022, a report police have said is false. Police said it’s possible that Bryant dropped the weapon during the commission of the murder.
Morales’ cause of death has not been released, but police don’t believe she was shot.
Police said they don’t believe that Morales knew Bryant before her death.
Gwinnett Police Chief J.D. McClure defended his department’s response to Morales’ case at the news conference, saying the case was immediately assigned to an investigator.
“This type of crime at the hands of law enforcement evokes anger even within the ranks of this agency,” McClure said.
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