A homeless Navy veteran was charged Wednesday with kidnapping a young woman who was found dead days after going missing from her job on a Virginia naval base.
Eric Brian Brown, 45, was charged with kidnapping Ashanti Billie, 19.
She was reported missing on September 18 after she failed to show up for work at a fast-food restaurant on Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Norfolk, Virginia.
Police said that they have charged Eric Brian Brown (pictured left), 45, with kidnapping Ashanti Billie, 19
Her remains were discovered behind a church in Charlotte, North Carolina (Pictured: East Stonewall AME Zion Church)
Her body was found Sept. 29 behind a church in Charlotte, North Carolina more than 300 miles away.
Authorities say a man cutting grass at East Stonewall AME Zion Church smelled something strange, which turned out to be 19-year-old’s body.
Billie moved to Virginia to attend culinary arts classes at the Art Institute of Virginia Beach, NBC News reported, following her graduation from Henry Wise High School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 2016.
She was thought to be arriving at work at the Blimpie sandwich shop where she was employed as an assistant manager.
According to a criminal complaint, Brown worked as a day laborer and lived at buildings on and around the base.
As a retired petty officer, Brown had access to the base, court documents said.
Prosecutors said the 21-year Navy veteran visited the restaurant where Billie worked almost daily.
Billie’s body was found more than 300 miles from her Virginia home in September
Surveillance video shows a man who resembles Brown driving Billie’s car the day she went missing, according to court documents.
Her car was then spotted by neighbors on September 23 abandoned on a dead-end street in the Ocean View part of Norfolk.
The man throws an item into a trash can; construction workers later found Billie’s cellphone there and turned it over to police in Norfolk.
Billie’s body was found a few hundred yards from Brown’s childhood home, documents indicate.
Brown was arrested on unrelated trespassing charges in October, prosecutors said, and investigators questioned him about Billie’s disappearance.
Brown said he was on the base Sept. 17, when he said he blacked out and had no recollection of what he did for several days after that.
DNA recovered from Billie’s body was consistent with Brown’s DNA profile, prosecutors said.
Brown faces up to life in prison if convicted on the kidnapping charge. It could not be immediately determined if he has a lawyer.
Surveillance video shows a man who resembles Brown driving Billie’s car (pictured) the day she went missing