Susana Morales was born on June 24, 2006, in Atlanta, Georgia, and she was the youngest of three daughters. Everyone who knew her described her as funny, kind, sweet, and sarcastic. She had a passion for music and was a talented singer and piano player. She also taught herself how to play the guitar and the ukulele. Susana was an active cheerleader at Meadow Creek High School, where she was a freshman. She was born in Atlanta but grew up in Norcross, a suburb of Atlanta, where people knew her as responsible. She always let her mother know where she was going to be, who she was going to be with, and when she would be home. That made the Susana Morales case even harder for her family to accept from the start.
July 26, 2022, started as a normal day. Susana helped her mom at work because she wanted to make some extra money. Around 6:00 p.m., she told her mom she was walking to a friend’s house at the Sterling Glen apartment complex. The complex was less than a mile from her house, and she had been there many times before. At 9:40 p.m., Susana texted her mom and said she was on her way home, but she never made it home. Her mom tried calling and texting, but there was no response. At 9:00 the next morning, the family went to the police station to file a missing person’s report. Police told them to wait 48 hours they thought Susana had most likely run away.
That response left the family on their own, so they started doing the work themselves. They passed out flyers, spoke to neighbors, and asked local businesses if they had seen Susana. The community stepped up. Local businesses provided footage that showed Susana walking near Singleton Road and Indian Trail Lilburn Road around 10:00 p.m. Her phone records showed that between 10:07 and 10:21, she was walking in the direction of her house. But, by 10:26 her phone pinged a mile east of her home in the opposite direction. After that, the phone stopped pinging entirely. Telemundo Atlanta gave the case early attention, but other stations did not. Maria, Susana’s mother, felt discriminated against by police and even news stations because of language barriers and ethnicity.
The Susana Morales case raised a broader issue. Missing Black girls, women of color, and Indigenous women do not receive the same urgency when they go missing.
It was not until August 29, more than a month after Susana Morales disappeared, that Gwinnett County Police issued a press release. Even then, they said they had exhausted all leads and claimed there was “no indication that Morales was in any specific danger.” Her sister said the family knew that was not true. They kept following leads, checking businesses, making trips out of state, and even trying to find her on social media. Then, on February 6, 2023, a driver stopped on Highway 316 between Drowning Creek and Barrow County. They walked in the area, and found skeletal remains. They identified the remains as Susana through dental records and DNA. The condition of the remains prevented investigators from determining the cause of death.
The next day, investigators found a handgun near Susana’s body. That gun belonged to Miles Bryant, a 22-year-old police officer. He reported the gun stolen on July 27, 2022, the same day Susana’s family reported her missing. He also lived at the Sterling Glen apartment complex where Susana was last seen. In his report, he said he thought he had left his truck door unlocked, could not find his wallet, and noticed his holster on the floorboard without the gun. Later, detectives confronted him with the fact that his story did not line up. They told him his phone placed him in the woods the night Susana went missing, his gun was found with her body, and they had evidence placing his truck near her home. He denied knowing Susana Morales and denied harming her. But, detectives made it clear they did not see those facts as coincidence.
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On February 13, 2023, they arrested Bryant and charged him with concealing the death of another and filing a false police report. On February 22, they changed him with felony murder and kidnapping. Later, another woman, Alaisha Bates, came forward and said Bryant had stalked her and tried to break into her home before Susana disappeared. She provided Ring footage that showed him at her door. She said she reported him to both Gwinnett County Police and Doraville Police, but neither took significant action. A neighbor accused Bryant of trying to break into another neighbor’s house in 2018. That part of the Susana Morales case raised a painful question: could Susana’s murder have been prevented if those warnings had been taken seriously?
In January 2024, Bryant faced five charges: malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, false report of a crime, and attempted rape. The added charges caused a delay in the trial During that same period, Susana Morales’s family kept pushing for accountability. They said Gwinnett County Police failed to properly investigate her disappearance, and they said the Doraville Police Department was negligent in hiring Bryant. A lawsuit was filed against the apartment complex for negligence. They argued it should have known Bryant was a threat, should have warned residents, and failed to provide adequate security. On the one-year anniversary of Susana’s disappearance, her family gathered at her grave with flowers and again asked for justice and change.
In mid-June 2024, a jury found Miles Bryant guilty of malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, and false report of a crime. A jury found him not guilty of attempted rape. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for malice murder, and he received 12 months consecutive for the false report charge. The Susana Morales case is heartbreaking because so many things went wrong. A 16-year-old girl disappeared on a short walk home. Her family was dismissed, prior warnings about Bryant were ignored, and the person tied to her death was someone who had taken an oath to serve and protect. Susana’s family has made it clear that no outcome will bring her back, but they want her death to change something so this does not happen to anyone else again.
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