The body of a flight attendant was discovered by a fisherman in a Texas creek more than a year after she was allegedly strangled by her roommate.
Dennis William Day, 67, allegedly admitted to choking Rana Nofal Soluri, 47, an Envoy Air flight attendant, to death. She was last seen alive in March 2025.
An unidentified fisherman stumbled on Soluri’s body on the bank of Brushy Creek under a bridge in June — roughly a year after she was reported missing, Fort Worth Police Department Homicide Unit Detective Tom O’Brien told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
After the morbid discovery, the body was taken to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification and confirmed to belong to Soluri two weeks ago, O’Brien said on Friday.
Her body may have been covered in mud when cops began desperately searching for her remains at the creek a year before the fisherman’s discovery, the outlet reported.
A GoFundMe for Soluri’s burial expenses said in an update last week that American Airlines, which owns the regional carrier where the mom was employed, was helping to fly her remains to Seattle, where her daughter, Lulu, will “finish laying her mother to rest.”
The heartbroken daughter is also using the fundraiser funds to contribute to a trip to Texas for an October court date — where she will release a statement.
“If you are unable to give, please send your strength and encouragement for her tremendous bravery and resilience during the court appearance. Again, Lulu is a very private person, so this is a huge feat for her to face the person accused of killing her mother,” the GoFundMe statement said.
“Lulu thanks everyone for their support. She is always overwhelmed knowing how many people have helped her during this process.”
Around the time she is believed to have been killed, Soluri was recovering from minor surgery and had been out of work since late March, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
However, in June, her Envoy Air co-workers reported her missing after she failed to show up for work as scheduled and they couldn’t reach her.
Police quickly zeroed in on Day — Soluri’s longtime friend — as a suspect after her co-worker told investigators they had been roommates for about a year.
Day told cops that he had not seen her for three months during a welfare check on June 10. Later that month, he once again denied any involvement in her disappearance and consented to a search of his property.
During the search, investigators obtained video surveillance footage from the night of March 21 showing Day dragging “what appears to be a lifeless body from the home into the backyard.”
Day then allegedly admitted that he and Soluri had fought after she had filmed him acting irate, and when she threatened to call 911, he panicked and strangled her with his bare hands on the kitchen floor.
Cops said he confessed to stuffing her body into a black trash bin and dumping it off a bridge in Bowie. He also allegedly ditched her cellphone in a nearby river.
Joni Thomas, 63, has also been charged with tampering with evidence and helping Day dispose of Soluri’s body.
Day was indicted on a murder charge and allegedly bragged to people in jail that he could not be convicted if no one ever found Soluri’s remains, according to a notice filed by the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office before the positive DNA verification.
Both Day and Thomas’s cases remain pending.
