TAMPA (WFLA) – A New York man was held at gunpoint by federal authorities mistaking him for Brian Laundrie, the person of interest in the Gabby Petito homicide case, according to a report by the New Yorker.
According to the New Yorker, Severin Beckwith and his partner Anna Brettmann, from Ithaca, New York, were at their North Carolina hotel when U.S. Marshals burst in with guns drawn while the couple was on a hiking trip from Georgia to Virginia along the Appalachian Trail.
The Marshals told Beckwith they were looking for Laundrie, who was reported missing by his North Port parents after he returned home alone from a cross-country road trip with his fiancée, Gabby Petito. She was found dead in Wyoming days after Laundrie had disappeared.
Unfortunately for Beckwith, he shares a resemblance with Laundrie: skinny and pale, with a shaved head and a beard, the New Yorker reported.
Beckwith told the paper that someone else had recently said he resembled the missing Florida man. But the U.S. Marshals had seen more than a passing similarity.
According to the report, one of them touched the side of Beckwith’s head and noted that he had “a notch in the upper part of my inner ear just like his,” Beckwith said.
The news comes as other Laundrie spottings have occurred near the Appalachian Trail.
Last month, the FBI issued an arrest warrant for Laundrie, who was previously named a person of interest in the homicide investigation of Petito. He has been considered missing for several weeks.
The FBI confirmed on Sept. 21 that a body found in Wyoming was that of Petito. Her cause of death was ruled as a homicide, and autopsy results show that she died of strangulation.