REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
- The parents of Gabby Petito's fiancé Brian Laundrie are worried that he may have hurt himself.
- Christopher and Roberta Laundrie are "very concerned" about their son, a lawyer for the family told Insider.
- Brian Laundrie remains missing and authorities have been searching for him for days.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
The parents of Gabby Petito's fiancé Brian Laundrie are worried that he may have hurt himself in some way as a manhunt for the missing 23-year-old continues, a lawyer for the man's family told Insider Friday.
Christopher and Roberta Laundrie are "very concerned" about their son, who has been named a person of interest in the disappearance and death of 22-year-old Petito, the attorney for Brian Laundrie and his parents, Steven Bertolino, told Insider.
The parents have previously been interviewed by the FBI "with respect to locating Brian," Bertolino said.
Brian Laundrie's parents reported him missing on September 17 after they told police that their son went out for a hike with only a backpack three days earlier and never returned to their North Port, Florida home.
He left the home, where he also lived with Petito, without a cell phone or wallet and has "no known means of communication," Bertolino told Insider.
North Port Police Department
Since September 18, authorities across several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have been searching a vast, alligator-infested nature preserve near the home where Brian Laundrie's parents said he went for the hike.
Petito's body was found at a remote campsite in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest on September 19. Her death was later ruled a homicide, according to a coroner's initial findings.
Meanwhile, the air and ground search for Brian Laundrie at the 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve in Sarasota County continued Friday, a day after the FBI's Denver field office announced that a federal court in Wyoming issued an arrest warrant for Laundrie in the case.
The single-count indictment against Brian Laundrie alleges that he "knowingly and with intent to defraud" used one or more "unauthorized access devices," including a Capital One debit bank card, from August 30 to September 1 following the death of Petito.
Brian Laundrie is accused of spending at least $1,000 on the card during those three days, according to the indictment.
"The warrant doesn't change anything for us," North Port Police Commander Joe Fussell said while walking through the Carlton Reserve Friday in a video released by the police department.
"We're working as hard to find him now as we did on day one," said Fussell, who added, "We are not wasting our time out here. We are doing our due diligence to find Brian in an area that intelligence had led us that he could possibly be in."
Brian Laundrie and Petito set out on a cross-country road trip in a white converted camper van from Petito's hometown in New York on July 2, documenting their travels on social media along the way.
During their travels, Petito maintained regular contact with her family members until that communication abruptly stopped in late August, according to her relatives and police.
Brian Laundrie returned home to Florida on September 1 in the van the couple had been traveling in and without Petito. The young woman was reported missing by her family 10 days later.