Giovanni Pelletier's Death: Video Footage, Updated Timeline Shared By Manatee Sheriff

BRADENTON, FL — Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells shared surveillance video footage on Tuesday that showed some of the last known moments of 18-year-old Giovanni Pelletier’s life. His body was found on Aug. 8 in a retention pond off Interstate 75. (Watch the video footage below.)

At the Tuesday morning news conference, the sheriff also laid out a timeline for when he went missing and the investigation that followed.

The North Carolina teen disappeared after leaving Englewood, where he was staying with his mother and her fiance, in the early morning hours of Aug. 1 to visit his paternal family in Brevard County, the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office said.

Giovanni’s three cousins, who picked him up from where he was staying around 1:30 a.m., told investigators that he “began to act erratically” while they were traveling north on I-75 before getting out of the vehicle and walking away near State Road 70 in Manatee County, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said in a previous news release.

“Not long into the drive,” the four started smoking marijuana in the car, Wells said.

The cousins told investigators that Giovanni started “tripping” and that after a stop along River Road because he needed to use the bathroom, he started “acting out and raging” before getting back in the car, the sheriff said.

His cousins told detectives that the teen told them, “‘I am the demon’ and I will wreck this car’ and … he will kill them all,” according to Wells.

Giovanni also allegedly tried to open the door while the car was moving.

When they finally pulled over, he pulled out a knife, which was left in its sheath and never taken out of it, before he ran off along the southbound lanes of I-75. His cousins saw him in the middle of the northbound lanes, where he was almost hit by a truck.

He tried to FaceTime his mother, Bridgette Pelletier, and texted her asking for help just before 2 a.m.

The cousins, who drove off, called their grandfather and then Bridgette around 2:30 a.m. to let them know what happened. She was asleep and missed all calls and messages until after 6 a.m.

Those texts were the last time Bridgette heard from her son. She used the GPS data from his phone to track it and the backpack that it was in to an area of I-75 near State Road 70.

As she got closer to the area, the phone’s location started moving, according to Wells.

Investigators later learned a truck driver had seen the bag on the side of the road and picked it up, driving it into Hillsborough County, the sheriff said.

Shortly after this, the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office opened a missing person’s case for Giovanni.

MCSO worked with Charlotte County deputies to search the area on Aug. 4 and 5, including an “extensive search of the wooded areas on both sides of State Road 70,” Wells said. Deputies brought out cadaver dogs during the second search in that area, but there were no signs of Giovanni.

They stopped looking in that area because Charlotte County detectives started to think “maybe he never made it to State Road 70,” Wells said.

A family friend searching the area of I-75 at State Road 70 days later, on Aug. 8, found the partially submerged body at the edge of the retention pond around 3:15 p.m., MCSO said in a previous news release.

See Also:

• Body Positively Identified As Missing Teen, Giovanni Pelletier
• Giovanni Pelletier’s Family Calls For FBI Investigation After Body Found In FL Pond
• ‘Mom Help’: NC Teen Vacationing In FL Sent Brief Text Before Going Missing More Than 1 Week Ago
• Missing NC Teen Who Was Vacationing In FL Found Dead

After the body was found, MCSO sent its entire Homicide Unit to process the scene. The Medical Examiner’s Office was also at the scene to process the body, which had no signs of trauma.

“There was no indication that he was shot, no indication that he was stabbed,” Wells said. “There was nothing at that time that helps us determine the cause of death.”

Investigators were back at the scene on Aug. 9 with a drone to continue combing the area and the dive team returned to search the pond again on Aug. 11.

The Medical Examiner’s Office couldn’t identify Giovanni’s body, which was badly decomposing, until Friday, through dental records and additional forensic testing.

The cause of death remains undetermined pending toxicology results, which are expected to take several weeks, investigators said.

Detectives also focused on finding nearby surveillance video footage to see if it captured what happened to the teen as he made his way to the retention pond.

“We’re trying to pinpoint exactly where Giovanni got out of the car. That’s our main focus,” Wells said.

A Florida Department of Transportation camera recorded him crossing I-75 and climbing over a concrete barrier at State Road 70 on Aug. 1 at 2:19 a.m., MCSO said.

Additional footage from a nearby Lowes shows Giovanni coming over the barrier wall and running down the embankment — at “an uncontrollable sprint” — toward the pond where his body was later found, Wells said.

Cell phone data shows that his cousins he was riding with were north of that location at the time Giovanni is captured on video.

“What we don’t know is what happened when he hit that pond,” Wells said, stressing that the teen was by himself. “They don’t look for him. They don’t come down that embankment after him.”

Watch surveillance video footage of Giovanni after he left his cousins’ car in the early morning hours of Aug. 1: