Gabby Petito’s Parents Reveal What They Did with the Van She and Brian Laundrie Drove Across the Country

Gabby Petito’s parents have revealed what they did with the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van in which their daughter used for a cross-country road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie.

Gabby’s father Joe Petito told NewsNation on Monday, Feb. 17, that the family “didn’t want the van to be out there, someone owning it and, ‘Here’s the van that Gabby was…’ you know.”

“We crushed the van,” he said.

During the interview, Gabby’s stepmother Tara Petito showed pieces from the van they kept, including the gas tank cap and a Great Smoky Mountains sticker.

Gabby, 22, disappeared on a cross-country journey with Laundrie in the summer of 2021. Before she vanished, she and Laundrie documented their four-month “van life” journey on social media.

The journey ended in tragedy when Gabby was found strangled on Sept. 19 near a campground in Wyoming.

Laundrie was named a “person of interest” after her disappearance and later died by suicide, leaving behind a notebook “claiming responsibility” for the vlogger’s murder, authorities said.

Gabby’s mother Nichole Schmidt previously told PEOPLE that “there’s never going to be closure,” she said. “We’re never going to feel like we have justice. There’s just nothing we can do to make us feel better, but what we can do is continue on with her legacy.”

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After her murder, Nichole, along with her husband Jim Schmidt and Joe, and his wife Tara, started the Gabby Petito Foundation. The non-profit focuses on raising awareness about domestic violence and creating tougher laws and policies governing how police deal with information about intimate partner abuse and missing persons.

They also work closely with the Black and Missing Foundation and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives organization and support the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“We can give ourselves this motivation to keep going and not be sad all the time,” Schmidt said. “I know Gabby would not have wanted that.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.