A suspect has been charged with the death of a Maryland teacher who disappeared more than a month ago and whose remains were found 20 miles from where she vanished.

Mariame Toure Sylla, 59, was last seen on July 29 when she headed out for a walk in Greenbelt’s Schrom Hills Park, where she regularly walked. Sylla, a second grade teacher at Dora Kennedy French Immersion School, never returned and was reported missing the following day, as CrimeOnline reported.

Police were alerted to human remains near a pond in Clinton, about 20 miles away, by a “concerned citizen” on August 1, Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz said on Friday, when he announced that DNA results had identified the remains as Sylla, WRC reported.

Aziz said that Harold Francis Landon III, 33, has been charged with her murder.

“This appears to be stranger to stranger at this particular time,” Aziz said. “You know, when we’re investigating these type of things, we always leave a door open for something that could have been missed, but our detectives have been working really hard to make those connections, and we haven’t found any connection that these two people knew each other, and I don’t believe they knew each other. I just think we have a person who decided to commit an horrific crime.”

Landon was arrested on August 1 on an unrelated domestic violence charge, just hours before Sylla’s remains were found, and has been in jail since that time.

Prince George’s County Educators Association President Dr. Donna Christy said that Sylla planned to retire next year.

“She had purchased a home back on the Ivory Coast in Africa,” Christy said. “She was praying to move home.”

Sylla’s sister, Fati Toure, who traveled to Maryland from their native Ivory Coast when her sister vanished, was also at Friday’s police news conference.

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[Featured image: Mariame Toure Sylla/Greenbelt Police Department]