In the minutes after a missing UVA student was recorded by two separate surveillance videos as she walked east on the Downtown Mall just after 1am on Saturday, September 13, multiple eyewitnesses report seeing her with a tall, heavyset black man with dreadlocks dressed all in white along the Downtown Mall and at Tempo restaurant on Fifth Street, police revealed at a 5pm press conference. That man appears in the surveillance videos walking west by himself and then east side-by-side with Hannah Graham. He lives at the Hessian Hills residence police searched earlier today, Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo said, and owned a “burnt orange” Chrysler Coupe that was taken into custody following the search and which was parked on Fourth Street the night of Graham’s disappearance.
“We believe that Hannah Graham may have gotten in that car,” said Longo, who declined to name the man, reveal what type of evidence was retrieved from the apartment or car this morning, or whether it appeared to provide a link to Graham.
“There was no probable cause to arrest him,” said Longo, who said police have pored over more than 400 tips in the week since Graham vanished and asked anyone who may have seen the man she was with that night or in subsequent days to report the sightings.
The lead investigator on the case, Detective Sergeant Jim Mooney, declined to describe the man’s demeanor and said only that he’d spoken with him this morning during the search. “I would like to speak with him again,” he said.
The search for 18-year-old Graham launched when her family and friends reported her missing on Sunday, September 14, nearly 36 hours after she’d last had contact with anyone in person or by phone. Early surveillance video captured at McGrady’s restaurant and the Shell gas station on Preston Avenue show the UVA second year student walking unsteadily on the sidewalk and around the patio at the restaurant, then leaving without gaining entry and heading east on Preston towards the Mall.
There is a $50,000 reward in the case. Information should be called in to the Hannah Graham tip line at 434-295-3851.