One Precious Life : Jorelys Rivera

Criminal Digest
5 min readSep 16, 2022

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Jorelys Rivera

At just 7 short years of life, Jorelys Rivera touched many hearts and was loved so very much by her parents and siblings, and just all her family from Georgia to Puerto Rico. Her parents are Joseline Rivera and Ricardo Galarza. Her family is all from Puerto Rico, and her remains were sent there to lay to rest.

She had actually lived and grew up in Georgia since she was 3 years old when her mother and her left Puerto Rico, however she returned on school vacations to visit family and spend time with her dad. She lived with her mom and sisters in Canton , Ga. At the apartments her family lived in, Jorelys had many friends, I was told by several people I’ve spoken with that Jorelys was just a beautiful soul. She was well mannered, playful, and just so full of life. Just minutes before she was abducted she was doing what she loved playing on the play ground and then her and her friends wanted something to drink , so the kind soul she was, Jorelys volunteered to go get drinks for her and her friends. And a monster was waiting . He had already planned it by taking one of her toys and telling her he had it in his apartment so she would go with him to an abandoned apartment that he took from the office that day. I won’t put out the personal issues, but her family has suffered too much since this happened, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have done some crazy shit too knowing my baby was killed in such a painful way, and to just imagine how scared that baby was. Here’s a story I’ve put together the best I could, this had to be the hardest thing I ever wrote….

December 2, 2011

At around 7:30 P.M. on December 2,2011, Canton, Georgia Police Department responded to a 7 year old little girl who was missing, and last seen around 5:15 at the playground on the premises of the apartments she lived, River Ridge. Officers were informed she had on boots, a long sleeve shirt, and jeans.

Within the very first hour of arrival, Canton Police Department had called in several different agencies, including Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, Canton Fire And Rescue, and The Cherokee County Search And Rescue Team. Canton police maintained their presence at the apartment complex through the night even though they suspended all search efforts at 2:00 A.M. December 3rd. The very next morning at 5:30 A.M. Canton Police, The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, and Cherokee Fire And Rescue along with hundreds of citizens resumed their search. The search and rescue teams, hundreds and hundreds of citizens, neighbors from the River Ridge community worked very hard that day, December 3,2011 looking for this sweet innocent child. There was one person among all those people who had answers.

At 3:00 P.M. on December 3rd Canton Police reclassified the incident from a missing child to a child abduction. Everyone continued their search efforts even past the perimeter, checking all sex offenders and child abuse offenders throughout the city. It was on December 4, 2011 that Canton Police and Cherokee Emergency Management, the search team then established a command post in the parking lot of The Carmike Cinema, which is just a couple miles from the apartments Jorelys lived and was last seen.

Cherokee County Sheriff’s office spoke with the Director of the GBI and after receiving approval from Canton Police Department, The GBI officially joined the investigation and search, utilizing their Child Abduction Recovery Team ( CART ).

At approximately 9P.M., a new search by Canton Police was conducted, searching apartments that had already been searched. It was at that time, inside a vacant apartment at River Ridge that they came upon Jorelys Rivera’s crime scene, but not Jorelys Rivera. It was at that moment everyone learned this apartment was actually searched already by Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office and Canton Fire Department Personnel.

It was December 5, 2011 when Jorelys Rivera’s lifeless body was recovered in a trash compactor on the River Ridge Apartment property.

The End For The Monster

Every news station in Ga and even surrounding states , HLN, even had picked up on this little sweet innocent girl’s murder and we all wanted this guy caught and put away. I was an employee at a local store really close to the apartments.

What everyone didn’t realize was for the days everyone was searching for Jorelys, one of the searchers we saw everyday there and on T.V. was actually the horrifying monster that did this to her, Ryan McCabe Brunn.

He was a 20 year old maintenance man at the apartments. His roommate was actually the son of the apartment’s manager. Originally from Dahlonega, Georgia ( 50 miles NE of Canton ), adopted with 3 brothers and a sister. Ryan and just moved to Canton from the Dahlonega in November 2011, just one month before he raped, beat, and murdered Jorelys Rivera. Even though that answered the big question as to what happened to Jorelys, it kinda made me wonder exactly why he just up and moved from Dahlonega. I mean it did only take him one month to do what he did to Jorelys. And let me tell you it was really an act of a monster.

December 2, 2011 he took a key for an abandoned apartment from an unlocked box that keys were kept in the office. Now I did ask and that little box with apartment home keys inside was supposed to be locked at all times. He then just mingled beside that vacant apartment until he caught one of the little girls that lived there alone. He acted like he found something that belonged to Jorelys when he saw her leave the playground and go get her friends drinks. He ushered her into that apartment and he raped her, sodomized her, beat her, and killed her. Jorelys’s cause of death was blunt force trauma and she had been stabbed to death.

This, like I have already said, was the hardest case I’ve ever written about.

Everyone Hug your babies today and tonight!

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

JORELYS RIVERA

Thank you to

11 Alive

Courthouse News

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Criminal Digest
Criminal Digest

Written by Criminal Digest

I’m a wife, mama, dog owner and lover of all animals. I’m a nana, and a writer! My Faith & sobriety are some things I hold closest to me More Love Less Hate

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