Usually when tow trucks are called out to haul away an abandoned vehicle it’s a fairly quick, uneventful process. But just such a call went sideways when a tow truck operator in Beaufort County, North Carolina found a dead body in the trunk. Authorities concluded it was 19-year-old Amarriah Smith.
Check out the humble car Brock Purdy drives.
The vehicle had been successfully towed to the company’s impound lot and it was there the grizzly discovery was made. It didn’t take long for law enforcement to identify the suspect in Smith’s murder since the impounded vehicle belongs to 29-year-old Jordan Thomas.
According to local news station WITN, Thomas abandoned his own vehicle with Smith’s body in the trunk in a Tyco Crushing parking lot, likely hoping she wouldn’t be discovered. Authorities believe Thomas then stole a truck from the parking lot, which was later found at a hospital where they arrested him.
No cause of death for Smith has been released to the media yet and authorities have stayed mum on a motive. But authorities must feel confident as they build a case against Thomas, who was at first charged with concealing the death of a person and larceny of a motor vehicle. They say Thomas and Smith knew each other. Her family said she went to the tattoo parlor near her university’s campus and apparently Thomas worked there.
It’s cases like these that twist our stomach and keep us up at night. WITN interviewed Smith’s mother and father who seem devastated by the senseless slaying of their daughter. While Thomas is presumed by the legal citizen innocent until proven guilty, we hope prosecutors build a solid case and keep him from destroying yet another family later for who knows what contrived reason he came up with in his mind for murder.
Smith’s father says they learned Thomas shot another young woman three years ago, walking free for reasons unknown.
Image via YouTube
