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Missing teacher's boyfriend to return to Charlotte after arrest

CHICAGO — It may be Monday before the man in the middle of the search for a missing teacher comes back to Charlotte.

Angelo Smith reported his girlfriend, Bianca Tanner, missing on June 8 and told police that he doesn't know what happened to her.

Federal marshals arrested Smith in Chicago Thursday on a misdemeanor warrant, charging him with contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department detectives were there to try to question him again about Tanner's disappearance.

"We are not aware of them actually speaking with him regarding any charges," said Smith's attorney, Karen Dula.

Dula said Smith was not on the run but that he had been in Chicago visiting family and that he had planned to come back to Charlotte in several days to turn himself in on the charge.

She said police clearly wanted to ask him again about Tanner's disappearance but that he was not involved.

"We don't have any knowledge of him being connected to her death or disappearance. He's as concerned as the family," Dula said.

She said when Smith returns to Charlotte he would be processed at the jail on the misdemeanor charge, and that she and fellow attorney Kenneth Snow would try to get him released as quickly as possible, unless police add more serious charges.

However, a former prosecutor said police would have to have more than they're showing now to make a murder charge stick.
 
"They need something else or more than has been shared publicly," Rob Corbett, a defense attorney, said.
 
"Some type of eyewitness, there could be something else in terms of circumstantial evidence that shows some kind of hole in his story," Corbett said.