Morehouse College student Kyle Coleman was back home in Northern Virginia, having just completed his freshman year. He met up with friends Friday night but never made it home. His car was found badly damaged.
Coleman’s whereabouts, and well-being, are a mystery. The car accident that preceded Kyle’s disappearance took place in one of Northern Virginia’s busiest commercial areas, near Tysons Galleria. His bright blue Toyota Yaris left the road into a wooded area before smashing into a tree, police said. The vehicle’s airbags had been deployed. While Coleman was gone, his cellphone, car keys and a pair of slides remained inside the car.
He was last seen late Friday evening wearing a red and white Morehouse windbreaker and black running pants.
An emergency call went to Fairfax County 911 about 11:20 p.m. that night from the Morehouse freshman’s iPhone. But a crash alert feature on his phone, not Coleman, made the call, said the dispatcher who received the alert.
“Originally came in as a iPhone crash alert … with further callback, vehicle into a tree,” the dispatcher can be heard telling emergency personnel. His next line only adds to the concern about Coleman’s condition.
“A lot of screaming heard in the background of the call,” the dispatcher continues. “Fire department is responding as well.”
Two agencies, the Prince William County Police (where Coleman lived) and Fairfax County Police (where the accident occurred), are handling the investigation, with the former in charge of the missing persons probe and latter focused on the actual crash.
Investigators initially indicated they believe Coleman is “voluntarily” missing. However, after three days of intensive work from detectives, officers, forensic teams, K-9 units, and search and rescue teams deployed by Fairfax County Police, a body has been located.
Authorities are now working to confirm whether a body recovered from a pond in Tysons Corner is 19-year-old Kyle Coleman.
His parents, Keith and Cim Coleman, didn’t know something was amiss until Saturday morning, when they woke up at their home in Gainesville, Virginia, and discovered their son had not come home.
“Early Saturday morning, I think I pinged him and said, ‘Hey man are you still out?'” his father, Keith Coleman, told NBC-4 in Washington, D.C. “And I got no response from him.”
By sunrise, Keith Coleman’s father said his concern grew.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is not Kyle’s type behavior; we really need to check this out,'” he said.
Using the Life360 safety app, Coleman’s parents tracked his car to a tow lot in Merrifield. Cim Colman noted there was no blood found inside the car.
“Right now, we’re still trying to figure out what was his state of mind when that happened,” Keith Coleman said. “We don’t know if he sustained a head injury and he just was disoriented or something else that might have happened. We really don’t just know.”
Police have been speaking to Kyle Coleman’s friends in hopes they may know something his parent’s do not.
“If he is alert and watching this, we want to be able to say: ‘Son, we love you. Come home,'” Keith Coleman told NBC-4 . “‘We don’t care about what happened with the car. We don’t care about what events led up to what happened with the car …. What we care most about is you.'”
Cim Coleman chimed in with a mother’s plea that her son, “Just come home.”
“Yeah. We’ll fix it. We will get through this. Don’t be afraid,” she reassured.
