Left: Susana Morales (via Gwinnett Police Department). Right: Miles Bryant appears in court in February 2023 (screengrab via WXIA).
A former police officer in Georgia accused of kidnapping and murdering a 16-year-old girl was denied bond for the second time by a judge on Monday.
Miles Bryant, 22, currently stands accused of malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, and false report of a crime in connection with the death of Susana Morales, who was 16 when she was killed. Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Tamela L. Adkins denied Bryant's bond request, ruling that he is a danger to the community, according to Savannah-based CBS affiliate WTOC.
Gwinnett County Deputy Chief District Attorney Brandon Delfunt reportedly identified some of the details linking Bryant to the crime, citing records held on the defendant's personal and work-related cellular phones.
"Inside of his phone, the defendant searched for, 'How long does it take a body to decompose?'" the prosecutor said, according to the TV station.
Delfunt also accused Bryant of sexual deviancy, citing his then live-in girlfriend's messages about a stash of women's underwear she found in his apartment.
"She confronted him about it," Delfunt reportedly said. "And whenever he responded via text, he said that they were actually evidence in a case for the police department and that he had lost them and misplaced them and thanked her for in fact finding them."
The judge was not swayed by defense arguments that Bryant has many ties to the community.
"I find that you are a risk to the community and a risk to commit additional felonies," Adkins said.
Morales was reported missing by her family in July 2022. Bryant was arrested in February – at first on charges of concealing the girl's death and false report of a crime – after the victim's remains were found in the woods near a creek adjacent to Georgia State Route 316.
The grim discovery was made near the Gwinnett-Barrow County line, roughly 20 miles from where the teen was last seen alive "wearing light blue jeans, a yellow spaghetti-strapped shirt, and white crocs," on the evening of July 26, 2022, according to the Gwinnett Police Department. Phone records show she texted her mom that she was heading home at 9:40 p.m., and location data indicated that she was still on the move nearly an hour later.
But she never made it back.
Bryant, a now-former officer with the Doraville Police Department, hailed from Norcross, Georgia, as did the victim. He was fired after being accused of covering up Morales' death.
At the time, he lived in the Sterling Glen Apartments complex, where he also worked as a security guard, close to where Morales lived. Investigators believe Morales' last known location was that apartment complex, where she had been visiting a friend.
Arrest warrants obtained by Law&Crime show that authorities connected Bryant to the killing because he allegedly "gave a false report of a crime to a law enforcement officer by falsely reporting that his vehicle was broken into and his gun was stolen."
The warrant goes on to allege the defendant lived "in close proximity to [the] victim and dumped her naked body in the woods." In that initial charging document, Detective Angela Carter also wrote that Bryant "is known or suspected of" rape, murder, and other felonies.
"By the time she was reported missing we have every reason to believe that Susana was deceased," Gwinnett County Chief of Police James McClure previously said at a press conference, adding that while officials didn't know how Morales died, they were certain that "she died at the hands of Miles Bryant."
Bryant was denied bail by the judge overseeing the case on the day of his arrest – Valentine's Day. By late February, he was charged also with the teenage girl's kidnapping and murder, well over six months after Morales disappeared.
"It sucks that it took so long but I guess with him being an officer has something to do with that," the deceased woman's grieving sister Jasmine Morales told Atlanta-based NBC affiliate WXIA in the aftermath of the sad discovery of her sister's remains and criminal charges being filed against Bryant.
The Morales family has continued to criticize local law enforcement over how the case has been handled.
"It took the police department more than 6 months to find any leads regarding her disappearance until earlier this year they began to ask us for more details," Jasmine Morales wrote in an online campaign seeking signatures for a petition. "They asked for her full dental record and for my mom to do a DNA test. After all this, on February 8th they called us and said that her remains had been found in the woods."
The petition accuses police of breaking the law in the course of the investigation and demands the GCPD to acknowledge that "Title 35 of the Georgia Code was violated when the officers told us to wait 48 hours before reporting Susana missing."
According to the GCPD, a missing person report was taken around 9 a.m. on July 27, the morning after the suspected kidnapping, and the agency does not have a written policy mandating a "waiting period" for missing children.
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
