The boyfriend of an Aurora woman found dead last month in Florida said authorities consider him a suspect in her death.
Tyree Banks, 29, had known 18-year-old Shantay Leann Huntington for four months when the pair left Colorado this spring on a nationwide trip with Banks’ father and cousin. Huntington disappeared in May while the group was in Miami and was found dead in a wooded lot 70 miles away.
“The (investigators) told me that I knew that she was dead, or that I knew who did it,” Banks told The Denver Post from his grandmother’s Denver home. “I feel that they think I’m the one.
“I didn’t do anything to her, and I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to prove my innocence.”
Banks, who has a lengthy arrest record for drug-related offenses and considers himself a former gang member, said he last saw Huntington at 7 or 7:30 p.m. May 22 when she left the couple’s Miami motel room. When she didn’t return, Banks thought she headed back to Colorado because she didn’t like Florida.
Still, Banks said, he called the city’s jail multiple times to see if she had been arrested and reported her missing the next day.
Huntington’s body was found in Loxahatchee, Fla., the same day. Palm Beach County, Fla., authorities identified her last week. Investigators would not say if the Denver man is a suspect.
“It’s a little strange that (Banks) would come out and say that” he is a suspect, Palm Beach County sheriff’s Detective Robert Bennett said. “He’s still assisting us with the case.”
Huntington’s mother, Margaret Leyba, has declined to talk about Banks, saying she does not want to compromise the homicide investigation.
Banks and Huntington met through a friend earlier this year and immediately were attracted to each other, Banks said. After a month of dating, the father of five told his girlfriend that he wanted to travel and escape life in Colorado.
“I wanted to walk a straight line,” said Banks, who has not been arrested in four years, according to police records. “She wanted to come with me, and I shouldn’t have let her do that.”
Huntington was a high-school dropout but had plans to return to school and wanted to operate a hair salon, her mother said.
Palm Beach County investigators interviewed Banks this month, took DNA swabs of his mouth and searched his truck, Banks said. Authorities also interviewed Banks’ father, Hugo Jackson, and cousin Jeremy Rump, Banks said.
Banks returned June 3 to Colorado. Authorities are awaiting results of a forensics test to determine the cause of Huntington’s death.
“Because of the life I once lived, people have labeled me a certain way and that made me a target,” Banks said. “I swear on my life … that God is going to reveal who really did this.”
