Georgia police officer charged with concealing death of Susana Morales, 16-year-old missing 6 months

A Doraville, Georgia police officer has been arrested on charges that he concealed the death of a 16-year-old Gwinnett County girl whose body was found last week, six months after she went missing.

Miles Bryant, 22, was arrested Monday on one count of concealing the death of another and one count of false report of a crime, Gwinnett police said in a news release. He has been linked to the death of Susana Morales, who was found in the woods near Dacula on Feb. 6.

Police did not say how Bryant was allegedly connected to Morales’ death, and investigators are still working to determine how she died. Bryant was booked into the Gwinnett jail, where he remains, police said.

Representatives for Doraville police have not commented on Bryant’s involvement in the case.

Morales went missing the evening of July 26 when she was walking home from a friend’s house in the Norcross area, Gwinnett police previously said. She was reported missing when she did not return home as expected.

Morales’ body was found more than 20 miles from the area where she was last seen near her home. Her skeletal remains were found by a passerby near Drowning Creek, not far from Ga. 316, where they had been exposed to the elements for months.

Morales was the first of two missing Meadowcreek High School students to be found within a few days. The second, 17-year-old Rodrigo Floriano Mayen, was found after he had been missing for several days.

According to the Gwinnett medical examiner, Floriano Mayen had drugs in his system when he died, but no ruling has been made on his official cause of death. Another teenager was arrested and charged with concealing Floriano Mayen’s death, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.

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