Florida park at center of Brian Laundrie search reopens to public
A Florida nature park where authorities have searched for fugitive Brian Laundrie for the past month has reopened to the public.
The Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, a heavily wooded reserve that was closed to the public late last month for an FBI-led search for Laundrie, has reopened, the city of North Port announced on Twitter on Tuesday.
The FBI and North Port police declined to confirm that the move signals an end to the search for Laundrie at Myakkahatchee.
The neighboring 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve, where authorities have also been searching for the fugitive, remains closed to the public, according to the Sarasota County website.
“As this is an ongoing investigation there is no additional comment at this time,” a spokeswoman for the FBI Denver field office wrote in an email to The Post Tuesday.
Laundrie, 23, is sought for questioning in the disappearance and death of his 22-year-old girlfriend, Gabby Petito, during the couple’s cross-country trip.
Petito, a Long Island native, vanished in late August while Laundrie returned home to Florida without her on Sept. 1 — and quickly lawyered up.
Petito’s body was found Sept. 19 at a remote Wyoming campground and her death was ruled a homicide by manual strangulation.
Laundrie had disappeared by then and remains the subject of a massive manhunt.
He has not been charged in Petito’s death but has been identified as the sole person of interest in the case and faces a federal fraud warrant for using her debit card.
