DNA testing confirmed remains found in a Texas creek as missing flight attendant Rana Nofal Soluri, her roommate faces murder charges for allegedly dumping her body off a bridge.
Authorities say laboratory testing has identified a body pulled from a North Texas creek as Rana Nofal Soluri, the 47-year-old Envoy Air flight attendant who vanished in March 2025 and whose former roommate now stands charged with killing her.
Fox News reported that a Fort Worth police spokesperson told NBC News the University of North Texas Health’s Center for Human Identification matched the remains to Soluri, closing a missing-person case that stretched from a Fort Worth kitchen floor to a bridge roughly 70 miles away.
Dennis Day, 67, was arrested in June 2025 and charged with murder. Police and court records describe a dispute, a strangling, a trash bin, and a long drive into Montague County. A second woman, Joni Thomas, also known as Joanne Walters, 63, was charged with tampering with evidence with intent to impair a human corpse. Both cases remain pending.
Soluri flew for Envoy Air, the regional carrier owned by American Airlines. She had taken time off for a minor operation and was expected back on the job March 31, 2025. She never showed. Co-workers could not reach her. On June 11, 2025, a co-worker finally reported her missing to Fort Worth police.
By then, investigators already had a darker trail at Day’s Fort Worth house. Police say home surveillance from March 21, 2025, captured Day dragging what looked like a lifeless body from the home into the backyard.
Investigators described the footage in stark terms.
"what appears to be a lifeless body from the home into the backyard"
That clip, tied to the March 21 date, became a central piece of the case police built against the man who had shared the home with her as a longtime friend and former roommate.
Arrest-warrant language cited in the reporting lays out the alleged confession. Police said Day admitted he lost control during a dispute with Soluri inside the house.
"snapped" during a dispute with Soluri before he "began to strangle her with his bare hands"
Court documents describe the rest of the alleged sequence. Soluri was strangled on the kitchen floor. Her body was dragged to the backyard. Day then loaded her remains “head first” into a large black trash bin, drove her about 70 miles from the Fort Worth area, and dumped her over a bridge.
Police also pointed to an inadvertent call and message on another woman’s phone. In that recording, they said, a panicked Day asked for help moving Soluri’s body, a detail that pulled Thomas/Walters into the tampering case for allegedly helping dispose of the corpse.
On June 13, a fisherman came across the body on the bank of Brushy Creek, under a bridge in Montague County, about 70 miles northwest of Fort Worth. The remains went to the University of North Texas Health’s Center for Human Identification. DNA work there later confirmed what the family and investigators had feared: the woman in the creek was Soluri.
Day was already in custody on the murder charge by June 2025. Before the DNA match landed, prosecutors put something else on the record. The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office filed a notice, reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, stating that Day had bragged to people in jail that he could not be convicted if authorities never found Soluri’s body. He had also reportedly told fellow inmates he was confident he could not be charged while the body remained missing.
That jailhouse confidence met a hard stop once the lab finished its work. Identity was no longer a mystery. The bridge dump was no longer a theory without a name.
After the identification, Soluri’s remains were flown to Seattle for a Muslim burial on Sept. 29. A GoFundMe page set up for her daughter, Lulu Soluri, said American Airlines helped move her mother home for that service.
The same page described what comes next for the family. Lulu plans to travel to Texas for a future court date and is expected to deliver a statement there. The page framed that appearance as a heavy step for a private person forced into a public fight for her mother.
"Lulu is a very private person, so this is a huge feat for her to face the person accused of killing her mother,"
The page also thanked supporters who backed her through the search, the identification, and the burial.
"Lulu thanks everyone for their support. She is always overwhelmed knowing how many people have helped her during this process."
Day remains charged with murder. Thomas, also known as Walters, remains charged with tampering with evidence with intent to impair a human corpse. Neither case has been resolved.
The verified timeline is blunt. Soluri went missing in March 2025 after medical leave. Surveillance from March 21 allegedly showed a body being dragged from Day’s Fort Worth home. She was due back at Envoy Air on March 31 and never returned. A co-worker reported her missing June 11. A fisherman found the body June 13 under a Montague County bridge. Day was arrested and charged with murder that same month. DNA at the UNT center later put Soluri’s name on those remains. Prosecutors say that while the body was still missing, Day talked in jail as if the absence of remains might save him.
Police allege a bare-hand strangling on a kitchen floor, a trash-bin transport across roughly 70 miles, and a dump from a bridge. They allege a second adult helped impair the corpse. The daughter buried her mother in Seattle and still has to face the accused in a Texas courtroom.
A working flight attendant left home for a routine recovery window and ended up identified by DNA after a creek bank discovery. That is the record the lab, the warrants, and the pending charges now put in front of a jury, and in front of a family that waited months for a name.
When someone “snaps” and then shops for a bridge, the law’s job is simple: name the dead, charge the living, and make sure jailhouse bragging about a missing body never becomes a winning strategy.
