WAVY.com spoke to a regional manager of Knuckles N Knots, who confirmed Cornell and Armstrong were co-workers. Mark Harris says Cornell worked mostly at the Virginia Beach location and Armstrong worked in Chesapeake, but sometimes the two worked at the same location. He says Armstrong and Cornell were close friends, but he does not believe their relationship was romantic.
“We knew they were close friends, but he never really crossed our minds as a possible suspect,” Harris told WAVY.com
He says Justin Cornell began working for Kunckles ‘N Knots in March of 2014 and that he was well liked and highly requested by his clients. It was not until around the time of Armstrong’s disappearance that things changed.
“There was an incident on May the first where he didn’t show up to work. That’s before Brianna was missing. We did suspend him for a few days as per policy,” Harris explained. “We promoted someone here to a management position that he didn’t like, he sent me a message that he wasn’t happy about it, and given that I just decided that it was time for him to move on,” Harris told WAVY.com Cornell was let go on May 12th. That’s five days after Brianna Amrstrong was last seen or heard from and one day before police found her vehicle abandoned in a parking lot just half a mile from Cornell’s front door.
According to search warrants, Armstrong may have been kept alive for several days before her death. Her remains were found along a bike path at the Great Dismal Swamp in Chesapeake on June 4th. Police say the remains were separated and placed in bags.
“All of us are looking back and thinking, is there anything that could have indicated that this was a possibility. Is there anything that we could have done? It’s especially terrible for us because finding out that she was still alive for so long, you know? Our thoughts are, could we have tried harder? We organized a search party after they found her car, but could we have tried harder to find her? could we have prevented this? So yeah, our heads are just spinning, spinning on the whole thing.
Cornell’s neighbors are also now questioning if they ever saw anything suspicous. They say they don’t remember seeing Armstrong at Cornell’s apartment complex off Baker Road near Newtown Road in Virginia Beach. But they say he mostly kept to himself.
“I say he was a gentleman who was quiet. He came and went. If you had him in a lineup I wouldn’t be able to recognize him because he just kept to himself,” explained neighbor Cecelia Loch.
She says she watched Chesapeake and Virginia Beach police investigate out her front door Tuesday night. Neighbors weren’t sure how long Cornell lived at the unit located on Peak Court. According to court documents he moved to the area two years ago. And spend many years before that in the Tampa, Florida area. Paperwork shows he has two previous DUIs but no other criminal record.
