John Jefferson
Miles Bryant (left) in bodycam footage when questioned by police (11Alive/screengrab), Susana Morales (right) in a photo released by Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office.
A Georgia police officer who was fired after being accused of the 2022 kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Susana Morales was found guilty Wednesday and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Miles Bryant, now 23, was convicted as charged, with the exception of an acquittal for attempted rape. Kidnapping, false report of a crime, felony murder, and malice murder offenses, however, led Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Tamela Adkins to send him to prison for the rest of his days on earth.
The case against Bryant garnered significant local and national coverage after it was alleged that the then Doraville police officer kidnapped Morales in late July 2022 as she walked home in Norcross from a friend’s house, murdered her, “dumped her naked body in the woods” in Dacula along Highway 316, and then lied that his gun was stolen when someone broke into his Ford F-150.
Prosecutors said that Bryant’s not actually stolen gun was, in fact, found near where Morales’ body was discarded, and that cellphone location data from his work phone and his own device placed him near both where Morales was kidnapped and where her skeletal remains were discovered.
Susana Morales’ remains were not recovered until February 2023; the victim was identified through DNA testing and dental records. Search warrants revealed that Bryant lived “in close proximity” to Morales’ home.
Miles Bryant mugshot (Gwinnett County Police Department)
On the night Morales was last seen alive, authorities said, she texted her mom that she was on her way home, but she never made it.
“On Tuesday, Jul 26, 2022, Morales texted her mom at 9:40 p.m., saying she was on her way home. At approximately 10:00 p.m., Morales had not returned home. A location application showed Morales walking on Singleton Road to her home from Windscape Village Lane between 10:07 p.m. and 10:21 p.m. Morales was last seen wearing light blue jeans, a yellow spaghetti-strapped shirt, and white crocs,” documents said. “Between 10:21 p.m. and 10:26 p.m., Morales’s cell phone indicates that her last known location was at Oak Loch Trace near Steve Reynolds. Morales’s cell phone continued to show being in the area of Oak Loch Trace until the cell phone died or was turned off.”
Investigators said that Bryant and Morales did not know one another.
After his arrest, Bryant was fired from his job at the Doraville Police Department.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson said in a statement on the guilty verdicts that Bryant’s “despicable” crimes were “compounded by the fact that he was a police officer at the time.”
“We are profoundly sad for the Morales family,” the DA said.
At trial, jurors heard from Morales’ mother Maria Bran, who tearfully recounted the night her daughter didn’t answer her calls and never came home, as well as the painful several months of not knowing what had happened. The jury also heard key testimony from Bryant’s ex-girlfiend and a cellmate, local Fox affiliate WAGA reported.
While the ex-girlfriend blew up Bryant’s account of where he was when Morales was kidnapped and murdered, ex-cellmate Michael Jones told the jury that Bryant cavalierly shrugged off the allegations against him while behind bars, the report said.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be charged with this. They said they ain’t got nothing against me. It said right here, there ain’t no fluid, no blood, nothing. They ain’t got nothing against me,”” the cellmate reportedly said.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, however, that phone evidence showed Bryant searched for news stories about the Morales case, including about investigators’ discovery of the victim’s body, and that he even searched “how long does it take a body to decompose.”
Witness accounts also reportedly established that Bryant had a penchant for stalking.
After the guilty verdicts, special prosecutor Brandon Delfunt reportedly said Bryant deserved the max punishment because he’s a “predator,” a “monster,” and “he is what goes bump in the night.”
Morales’ mother and sisters delivered victim impact statements thankful for Bryant’s conviction. Still, their continuing devastation and sorrow over their loved one’s murder haunts them all every day, they said.
Through tears, Susana’s older sister Jasmine told the judge, “All I ever wanted was justice for what happened to her. I want to thank you for that.”
“Nothing will ever bring her back. To this day, I still hope that I’ll see her again,” Jasmine said. “No family, no mother, no father deserves to go through this.”
“Every night I can’t sleep without thinking of her,” said Susana’s mother Maria in Spanish, distraught and asking that Bryant be sentenced to the max for robbing her of her “happy” and “good” daughter.
“She didn’t deserve that,” the mother said, according to a translator. “I know that none of this is going to return her back and is not going to take away the pain that I feel every day.”
“There’s not a night that I don’t go to bed thinking about her because I miss her so much,” Maria added.
When it was his opportunity to speak at sentencing, Bryant reportedly apologized to Morales’ family.
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