With a suspect in the murder of Jmaal Keyes in custody, law enforcement officials focused Friday on finding the body of the Middle Georgia State College student.
Multiple agencies were assisting in the search along the Ocmulgee River just south of Hawkinsville, where the suspect, 17-year-old Robert Kane Rolison, is from.
Though some media outlets had reported the search was called off around 5 p.m., Todd Lowery, agent in charge of the GBI’s Eastman office, said that was not the case.
“Not at all,” he said. “We’re continuing to follow leads.”
Lowery would not say whether Rolison had provided information as to the body’s whereabouts.
“We don’t have a concentrated search at this time,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier Friday. “We’re just going to the obvious places that the public can access.”
The search is complicated by the swollen waters and rapid currents of the Ocmulgee.
Keyes, who went to high school in Paulding County, was last seen April 25 on the MGSCU campus in Cochran, Lowery said. Police know that Rolison was also on campus that day.
“We know where they started,” Lowery said. “We’re just trying to find where they finished.”
According to a press release issued by the college, the 17-year-old is enrolled in high school and at MGSCU.
“We are absolutely devastated by this news,” John Black, the college’s interim president, said late Thursday. “There are no words to describe how deeply hurt we are and how terrible we feel for Jmaal’s family.”
Authorities have not released a motive for the slaying, or how Keyes was killed.
Campus police chief Shawn Douglas told WMAZ-TV in Macon that Keyes and Rolison apparently knew each other as classmates, but their relationship beyond that was unclear.
About 20 people from Keyes’ Austell church drove to Cochran on Wednesday to help with the search for the missing 19-year-old. Destiny World Church had also posted a $3,000 reward for information leading the the teen’s safe return.
Pastor Wilbur Purvis said Friday he was shocked by news of the arrest.
“Of course, we were very hopeful and optimistic that we would get better news,” he said.
Purvis said Keyes, who graduated from Hiram High School, had been active in the church for the last 10 years.
He described him as “very loving, a very kind young man who loved his family and just a great young man that we have lost.”
“He was a very responsible young man so we are very surprised by where we are today,” the pastor said.
Purvis said the missing teen’s older brother graduated from college this week with a degree in criminal justice “and from what I remember, he wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps and we were very hopeful that he would do great things in life.”
“Never in 20 years of pastoring have I experienced this kind of grief in our church,” Purvis said. “You hear these reports all the time on the television and you never think it’s going to hit home like this.”
Purvis said that while Keyes’ mother was devastated by the news of an arrest, “her faith is still intact. She was very adamant when she spoke to her children about not being bitter, not being angry, accepting this as something that has occurred and believing that her faith in God will get her through.”
Debra Hogan, of Cochran, assisted in the search.
“He’s somebody’s child. He could’ve been my child,” she said. “You do what you’ve got to do.”
Staff photographer Ben Gray contributed to this article.
