Susana Morales texted her mother one summer night to tell her she was walking home after visiting a friend. But the 16-year-old never made it back.
Her family reported her missing the following morning in July 2022.
More than six months later, her skeletal remains were discovered near a Gwinnett County creek. And then a Doraville officer was tied to her death.
Miles Bryant, the former officer, has been serving a life sentence since June 2024 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Butts County after being found guilty of murder, kidnapping and false report of a crime. He was 23 at the time of his sentencing.
ABC’s “20/20″ program will feature the case, covered extensively by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, at 9 p.m. Friday. The new two-hour episode, titled “Tracking Susana,” includes interviews with the teenager’s family and Gwinnett police investigators. The true crime show is reported by correspondent John Quiñones.
“It’s been very difficult since the first day my daughter disappeared,” Morales’ mother, Maria Bran, said when she was in court for Bryant’s sentencing, according to previous AJC reporting. “Every night I can’t sleep without thinking of her.”
Morales was less than a mile from her Gwinnett home, roughly a 20-minute walk along busy roads, when she went missing July 26, 2022. She was returning from the Sterling Glen apartment complex, where she had visited a friend.
After she was reported missing, investigators quickly learned Morales had shared her location with a friend through an app. It showed that as she walked home, her phone “suddenly started traveling in the opposite direction” at a rate of approximately 40 mph, according to court records. Detectives said they believe that was the moment Morales got into a vehicle.
Shortly after, the app generated a “crash alert” at Oak Loch Trace, just under a mile from where she was allegedly taken. Investigators believe that is where her phone was thrown from the vehicle, and it stayed there until the battery died, a court filing stated. The phone was never recovered.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
On Feb. 6, 2023, Morales’ remains were found on the side of Ga. 316 near Drowning Creek. Dental records confirmed her identity, but an official cause of death was never determined.
Authorities also uncovered a loaded pistol during a search of the area. It was registered to Bryant, who had reported it stolen the morning after Morales disappeared, saying it had been taken from his truck. He “specifically requested that a detective not be assigned to investigate the disappearance of his gun or wallet,” prosecutors said at the time.
Data revealed that shortly after midnight July 27, Bryant’s personal and police cellphones were pinged in the same area where Morales’ body was recovered, court documents detailed. Records also showed his phone was back in the area later that same morning, about an hour before he reported his firearm stolen.
Analyses of Bryant’s work and personal phones, as well as his work computer, revealed some of his search history in the months after the teen’s disappearance. One of the searches investigators found was “how long does it take a body to decompose,” while other searches were for news articles related to Morales’ remains being found and her disappearance.
Bryant lived at the same Norcross apartment complex where Morales visited her friend the night of her disappearance, but police said there was no known connection between the man and the teen.
The trial against Bryant took only a week before he was found guilty and sentenced. In the courtroom, he said he wanted to apologize “to everybody (and) to the victim’s family.”
Credit: Rosana Hughes / Rosana.Hughes@ajc.com
Credit: Rosana Hughes / Rosana.Hughes@ajc.com
During the trial, Bryant’s attorney Tracy Drake admitted her client was guilty of false reporting of a crime and that Bryant had dumped Morales’ body in the woods.
“The fact that he left her out there is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard in my life, no matter what happened to her,” Drake said during closing arguments.
Bryant attempted to appeal his verdict and was denied a new trial in late March. He is now appealing that decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, a March 30 filing shows.
He began his law enforcement career as a jailer with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office in 2020 and joined Doraville police the following year.
Several allegations of misconduct had been documented against the former officer. Those accusations included sexual assault, burglaries and attempted burglaries, an encounter with a 12-year-old runaway, and surreptitiously obtaining sexually explicit photos of women he detained while on duty or with whom he worked while serving in the National Guard, according to previous AJC reporting.
Morales, a junior at Meadowcreek High School, was a happy teenager and loved by many, her mother told the AJC in early 2023. Morales wanted to one day be an undercover detective.
Jasmine Morales described her sister as the baby of the family. Beautiful and talented, she was always quick to hop on the piano or sing a song to brighten the room. Morales was bubbly and intelligent, and her future looked bright, her family previously said.
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