Missing Canton Girl: Maintenance Worker Arrested For Murder
An arrest has been made in the murder of 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera from Canton, Ga.
Ryan Brunn, a-20-year-old maintenance worker and resident of the River Ridge Apartment complex, the same complex where Rivera lived and her body was found, was arrested on Wednesday.
The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vernon Keenan, told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that investigators believe that the horrific crime was “planned and calculated.”
Get Our Latest News for FREE
“We have evidence that the murder occurred in a vacant apartment. At some point the child’s body was then disposed of in the dumpster and compacted into trash,” Keenan told reporters.
“We are confident that Brunn is the killer,” he added.
Brunn was taken into police custody at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Investigators told reporters on Tuesdaythat they felt that the killer of the young child lived in Rivera’s apartment complex or had "readily" access to it. It appears as though blood was found in the vacant apartment and investigators say that the arrest was made as a result of tips that came from people in the surrounding community.
The 7-year-old girl went missing from the Canton apartment complex last Friday.
She went missing from the apartment complex playground when she left her teenage babysitter to grab a soda from the apartment she was residing in across the street from the playground.
Her body was found at the apartment complex dumpster on Monday.
Several registered sex offenders reside in the complex, but investigators do not believe that any of the offenders were involved.
Rivera was stabbed and sexually assaulted, and a preliminary autopsy showed that she died of blunt force trauma to her head.
The investigation into the murder will be "mammoth," according to Keenan.
Rivera’s grandmother told WAPA News that the murder “destroyed my soul.”
“They took a piece of my heart,” she added.
