A Texas man has been charged with killing his flight attendant roommate and dumping her body off a bridge near Bowie.
Rana Nofal Soluri, 47, was declared missing by a coworker on June 11, as reported by KDFW. The last contact the coworker had with Soluri was on March 19, during which their conversation abruptly ended.
Soluri had taken off work earlier for minor surgery and had been expected to return to work on March 31, but she did not.
Since the brief conversation in March, the coworker had been unable to get in touch with Soluri. She informed investigators that Soluri had been living with Dennis William Day, 66, for approximately a year.
Police visited Day’s home to retrieve Soluri’s vehicle, which had reportedly been parked there for around two months. He claimed to have taken Soluri’s possessions to a storage unit and professed ignorance of her whereabouts. According to his arrest affidavit, Day neither showed knowledge nor concern about her situation.
An officer was called back to Day’s home on June 10, at which time Day said Soluri was a longtime friend. He again denied any knowledge of her whereabouts, saying he had called and texted her to no avail.
Investigators received a search warrant for Soluri’s cell phone records on June 18 and found that the last outgoing call on her phone was made on March 21 at about 3:45 p.m. Further records showed a “ping” on a cell tower near the home just before midnight that night and, nine minutes later, on a tower about five miles east of the home.
Investigators returned to speak with Day on June 23, and he again denied any knowledge of Soluri’s whereabouts. He consented to a search of his home, and investigators found video surveillance from March 21 showing him dragging “what appears to be a lifeless body from the home to the backyard,” the affidavit says.
Day was interviewed again, and police told him what they’d seen on the video. At that point, he said Soluri was videoing him and threatened to call police so he “snapped” and strangled her with his bare hands on the kitchen floor. Then he dragged her body out into the backyard, and disabled the camera equipment when he realized he was being recorded.
After that, he said, he stuffed her body into a large black trash bin and took her to the bridge near Bowie, where he threw her into the water. H said he also threw her cell phone into the river near Riverside and Interstate 35, not far from where the last ping on her cell phone was recorded.
Several days later, he said, he disposed of most of her belongings, including her handgun, which he said he tossed into a storm drain under I-35. Police later retrieved the gun.
Soluri’s body has not been located, and the relationship between the two has not been made clear.
Soluri had worked for Envoy Air, a subsidiary of American Airlines, since 2017.
Day has been charged with murder and is being held on a $200,000 bond in Tarrant County.
