Timeline of a murder

5:00 PM on Friday, December 2, 2011 Jorelys Rivera is playing at the playground at her apartment home.  She leaves the playground to get some drinks for her and her friends and is not seen again.

Later that evening Canton Police start their search for Jorelys.  Searching through the night for the missing 7-year child, on Saturday they set up a command post at the apartment complex.  On Sunday they continue searching and on Monday they bring in the Georgia Child Abduction Response Team.  They started checking local sex offenders.

12:30 PM on Monday, December 5, 2011 the searchers find Jorelys’ body in a compaction dumpster at the apartment complex.  A preliminary examination shows that Jorelys had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death.

December 7, 2011 the 20 year old maintenance worker at the apartment complex, Ryan Brunn, is arrested and charged with Jorelys murder.   Ryan had no prior arrests or convictions and was thought well of by friends and acquaintances.

Not much is heard about this case until January 15, 2012 when Ryan Brunn appears in court.  Cherokee prosecutors put together a plea deal with Brunn to take the death penalty off the table if he pleads guilty.  Brunn pleads guilty to the assault and murder of Jorelys Rivera.  Brunn relates the events of the crime in a cold and dispassionate voice.  The Judge sentences Brunn to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Brunn is quickly transferred from the Cherokee County Jail to a state facility in Jackson Georgia.

January 17, 2012 Ryan Brunn is found unresponsive in his cell at 4:15 PM.  He is taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 5:37 PM.

Cases like this almost never play out this fast.  In just over a month after the crime justice has been served.  Cherokee County officials were able to get Brunn to plead guilty by taking the death penalty off the table.  This allowed him to be brought to court and plead out in a relatively short time.  Some of us at work speculated how long Brunn would survive in prison before one of the other inmates got to him.  It didn’t work exactly out like that, but it was incredibly fast, only two days later Brunn was dead by his own hand.  He took the coward’s way out, but that’s OK, he won’t be doing any more crimes where he’s going!

Kudos to the Cherokee County and Canton City authorities for closing this case so quickly.  It can take 20 years or more for murders to be brought to justice and executed.  This case only took just over a month.

There was some additional fallout; the Chief of Police of Canton lost his job over this case.  Apparently some folks didn’t think he took the original call of the missing child seriously enough.  On Saturday he spent the afternoon watching the “Dogs” football game on TV at the command post.

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