Body of missing College of Charleston college student, Owen Tillman Kenney is found after teen killing self during solo early morning walk along Ravenel Bridge pathway.
The body of the 19-year-old College of Charleston student who mysteriously vanished near his South Carolina home on Halloween and then took his own life was found Saturday morning, police said.
Owen Tillman Kenney’s lifeless body was discovered in the water near Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant around 8:45 a.m., following an exhaustive, days-long search, according to the Charleston Police Department.
The missing student’s body was found some six hours driving distance from where he was last seen during the early morning of October 31.
Search for missing College of Charleston student had become recovery missing of body
‘I would like to thank everyone who took part in the effort to get Owen back to his family,’ Charleston Police Chief Chito Walker said in a statement.
Adding, ‘We hope this recovery brings some measure of closure to a family experiencing unimaginable loss. We ask that everyone continue to respect the privacy of the Kenney family during this difficult time.’
The discovery came just days after the Charleston Police Department giving an update stating that the search for the missing teen had become a recovery mission after saying surveillance tape showed the teen leaping to his death along the Ravenel Bridge pathway around 3.49 am, October 31.
Owen, a College of Charleston student, was first reported missing on Nov. 1.
Missing man spotted walking alone onto the Ravenel Bridge pedestrian walkway
The teen, from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, was last seen by friends around 2 a.m. on Oct. 31 near King Street and Burns Lane — an area just ‘minutes from his house,’ his family said in a statement on Facebook earlier this week.
Police said Owen Kenney was captured on surveillance footage walking alone onto the Ravenel Bridge pedestrian walkway – about three miles from where he was last spotted – shortly after 3 a.m., and his phone last pinged from the same area around that time.
Less than 49 minutes later surveillance video showed the teen dying by suicide on the bridges’ walkway at 3:49 a.m., police said.
Detectives with the CPD said Kenney was spotted walking alone onto the Ravenel Bridge pedestrian walkway.
Kenney graduated from Red Bank Catholic High School in Red Bank, N.J., in 2024, according to a Facebook post shared by the school.
According to The Monmouth Journal and The Post and Courier, which cited a school spokesperson, Owen transferred to the College of Charleston in January and was in the middle of his second semester as a freshman.
‘There are no words that can ease the pain of losing someone so young and so full of promise,’ College of Charleston President Andrew T. Hsu said in a statement on Saturday, ABC News reported.
‘Now is the time to surround his family with love, to support the friends and classmates who are grieving and to remind each other that no one in our campus family carries this weight alone. We have encouraged students who have been impacted to seek support through the Counseling Center.’
Not immediately clear is what led to the young man taking his own life and what struggles and or trauma the student may have been struggling with before taking their own life.
