New information has emerged in the case of a sailor who vanished from her Virginia Navy base in May and was discovered dead days later.
Authorities previously stated that Angelina Petra Resendiz was “last seen at her barracks in Miller Hall at Naval Station Norfolk” on May 29. She was discovered dead in an off-base wooded area days later, on June 9.
A Department of the Navy memo obtained and published this week by CBS affiliate WTKR and NBC affiliate WAVY sheds new light on the timeline of events leading up to Resendiz’s death.
The Navy confirmed in a memo sent to Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar that Resendiz, who was assigned to the USS James E. Williams prior to her death, was last seen at an unnamed sailor’s barracks around 10 a.m. local time on May 29 during a wellness check on another sailor.
According to the memo, Resendiz was on “authorized liberty” on May 29, which means she had “no assigned duties” on the ship that day and was “not required to muster with her chain of command.”
The Naval Station Norfolk Base Police initially conducted a wellness check at 5:45 a.m. that day when an officer “reported that he could not locate CSSN Resendiz after she contacted him requesting to be picked up at the barracks.”
According to the memo, police eventually entered her room, and she was later found in the room assigned to another sailor several hours later.
Resendiz was supposed to muster, or report for duty, at 7:30 a.m. the next day, but he failed to do so, according to the memo.
On May 30, at 9:30 a.m., another wellness check was performed on her room and the room of the other sailor she was last seen with, but “neither Sailor was located,” according to the Navy timeline of events. The other sailor’s name has not yet been revealed.
The new information comes weeks after Marshall Griffin, an attorney representing Resendiz’s mother, told WAVY that the Navy confirmed that a man named Jermiah Copeland was detained or confined “on suspicion” in the case following an initial review officer’s hearing at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Chesapeake.
Griffin and a US Navy spokesperson did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Griffin told WAVY that Copeland would remain in pretrial confinement and that charges were unknown at the time. These hearings, Griffin pointed out, assess “whether the individual is a flight risk, or they are likely to engage in other misconduct, and consider the government’s evidence whether a crime actually occurred.”
A spokesperson for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) confirmed in a statement to PEOPLE last month that a Navy sailor had been placed in “pretrial confinement” in relation to the case.
Resendiz’s body was discovered by the NCIS on June 9 in an off-base wooded area in Norfolk. The Norfolk Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed on June 10 that her body had been positively identified.
The young woman’s remains have been transferred to Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas. KVEO, a local NBC and CBS affiliate, reports that military personnel returned them home.
According to WAVY, Esmeralda Castle, Resendiz’s mother, stated that “the person responsible for this horrific loss made deliberate choices that ended Angie’s life.” She clarified that their actions were “not a mistake.”
“Angelina was a kind and compassionate young woman who brought light into our lives,” Castle said in a separate statement after her daughter died, describing the loss as “a void in their hearts.”
