Boyfriend arrested hours after body of missing FVSU student found in Crawford County
Law enforcement officials early Wednesday confirmed that the body of a young woman found Tuesday afternoon in rural Crawford County was that of missing Fort Valley State University senior Anitra Gunn.
City police in Fort Valley had, hours earlier on Tuesday night, arrested Gunn’s boyfriend, DeMarcus Little, in connection with damage allegedly done to Gunn’s apartment and to her car, a white Chevrolet Cruze that was found Saturday, the day she was reported missing.
Little, 23, was charged with criminal damage to property. He is accused of slashing the tires on Gunn’s car and smashing some of her apartment windows, Fort Valley police said in a statement posted on their Facebook page.
The statement said more charges could be forthcoming.
Little’s address on Chestnut Hill Road a couple of miles north of Fort Valley sits a little more than a mile and a half east of where Gunn’s body was discovered.
The 23-year-old Gunn was last seen Valentine’s Day morning at a house on Chestnut Hill Road, not far from where her body turned up along Greer Road, which sits east of U.S. 341 in southern Crawford County.
Crawford County Sheriff Lewis Walker said the body was found shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday.
The discovery came on the fourth day of the search for Gunn, who graduated from high school in Atlanta.
Law enforcement officials had been scouring the region for signs of the student, including a missing bumper from her car, which they hoped might yield clues to her whereabouts.
Gunn, an agriculture major, drove a Chevy Cruze, which was found damaged in Fort Valley a block or so from her apartment, the authorities have said.
At a Tuesday-evening news conference near where her body was discovered, Peach County Sheriff Terry Deese said one of his deputies cruising the area where Gunn was last seen spotted some disturbed bushes along the roadway.
The bushes and sticks matched some that had been found in the grille of Gunn’s Chevrolet.
After driving into the woods there just south of Greer’s Garage, which sits a couple of miles north of the Fort Valley bypass, the deputy noticed part of a bumper thought to belong to Gunn’s car.
It was there, perhaps 150 yards into a stand of pine trees, that Gunn’s body was found. It had been covered at least partially with tree limbs and branches as if someone had tried to conceal it, Deese said.
A cause of death was not yet apparent, the sheriff said Tuesday night.
“We’re not saying it’s a homicide, but the car shows up in Fort Valley,” he said. “It didn’t get there by itself. She couldn’t have drove there.”
Deese had met with Gunn’s father an hour or so prior to talking to reporters.
The sheriff said, “This is a good family that’s lost a daughter.”
Deese said Gunn’s boyfriend had spoken to investigators a couple of times in the days after her vanishing and that they were talking to him for a third time upon finding the body.
“I think it’s pretty common sense who our person of interest is,” the sheriff told reporters. “It’s the boyfriend. We’ve talked to him three times.”
Deese declined to elaborate.