Gabby Petito‘s family is suffering an unimaginable heartbreak.
Two days after the missing 22-year-old was confirmed dead, her stepdad Jim Schmidtand his friend Gary Rider left flowers in the shape of a cross at Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, where her body was found.
“The small cross with flowers was made by Jim and myself,” Gary told U.K.’s newspaper The Independent, noting there was already a memorial there made out of stone. “That larger cross was not done by anyone connected with the search or recovery of Gabby. It was just a coincidence, we confirmed that.”
Gary did not specify if Jim’s wife and Gabby’s mother Nicole Schmidt joined them at the site.
Nicole’s husband, a former fire chief in Blue Point, NY, had flown to Wyoming to help search for her daughter.
“He’s not leaving until he brings Gabby home,” Gabby’s mom told The New York Postin comments posted on Sept. 15, four days after the YouTuber was reported missing. “Now we have eyes, ears, feet on the ground … in both her home states and where she was last seen.”