“I'll tell you, my heart just jumped out of my chest. I was so certain at that point, that that was the man that I was face-to-face to 15 minutes ago,” Dennis Davis tells Inside Edition. He says that the man didn't look like he had been out in the woods.
A Tennessee hiker who says he is “100% certain” he saw Brian Laundrie near the Appalachian Trail is speaking out about the strange encounter with Inside Edition.
Dennis Davis, an engineer from Florida, says America’s most wanted man flagged him down in a white pickup truck.
“He just kind of sat there and looked for a minute, and I was like, well jeez, this is odd. He stopped me, but he's not saying anything,” Davis said.
Then, he says, things got even stranger.
“The first thing that he said to me was, ‘Man, I’m lost.’ And then he immediately went on and said, ‘Me and my girlfriend got in a fight, and she called me and she told me that she loves me, and I’ve got to get to California to see her,” Davis said.
The run-in last week came 8 miles south of the town of Hartford. Davis says he directed the stranger to Interstate 40, which runs 2,500 miles all the way to California.
Moments after the encounter, Davis says he had a shocking realization that the man he saw was actually Brian Laundrie.
“I'll tell you, my heart just jumped out of my chest. I was so certain at that point, that that was the man that I was face-to-face to 15 minutes ago,” Davis said.
He immediately called 911.
“He's waving his arm out of his truck, like for me to slow down. He was talking wild,” Davis told the dispatcher.
Davis said Laundrie “did not look like he had been out in the woods for multiple days or weeks."
When asked why he should be believed, Davis said, “I’m an engineer — a professional engineer. A lot of attention to detail. I believe it was him.”
Retired U.S. Marshal Lenny DePaul believes the hiker “sounds legit.”
“This history behind his story is consistent every time he tells it. So, he’s certainly worth an interview,” DePaul said.
The hiker tells Inside Edition he is meeting with FBI agents tomorrow to give them more information about what he saw.
