Nursing Student Murdered After Boyfriend’s Release, Family Says He Hit Her “100 Times” During Relationship

A college student from Mississippi was found brutally murdered. Lauren Johansen was discovered beaten to death and wrapped in a sheet in the backseat of her car on July 3.

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Authorities said Johansen’s body was found in Wolf Creek River Cemetery in Harrison County. Days before her death, Lauren’s father, Lance Johnson, went to visit a judge and warned that her boyfriend, Bricen Rivers, would kill her if released from jail. Rivers,23, has been previously jailed for aggravated kidnapping after brutally assaulting Lauren and holding her hostage during a trip to Nashville in December. He was released on bond days before her murder.

According to the Daily Mail, Lance recalled the horrific pattern of abuse his daughter endured, noting it was the fifth or sixth time Rivers had assaulted her. “You can see what happened when he hit her 100 times back in December, so just imagine what he did to her when nobody was around to save her,” he explained to the outlet.

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Rivers was arrested on July 4 after a six-hour manhunt and is now facing a murder charge with a $1 million bond. He had been initially held on a $251,000 bond for the kidnapping charges, which was later reduced to $150,000. Lauren was reported missing on July 2 when her sister woke up alone in their shared apartment to find the front door wide open, and their security camera smashed. The same morning, Lance Johnson received a message from Lauren’s Life360, a location-tracking app that had been turned off. He immediately reported her disappearance to the Hattiesburg Police Department.

The grieving father said he knew his daughter was dead after police located her whereabouts. “I helped the coroner lift her body out of the car. It was just mutilated,”I think the criminal justice system in Nashville, Tennessee, failed my daughter and our family. The world shouldn’t work this way,” he continued.

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