Body found in Beaufort County Saturday identified as missing 42-year-old man, police say
The body kayakers found in the water off St. Helena Island May 23 was identified Thursday as a missing Alabama man, local officials say.
An autopsy performed Monday identified him as 42-year-old Phillip Rawlings Jr., whose family reported him missing in Montgomery, Ala., on March 31, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office release.
Last Wednesday, Beaufort County Sheriff’s office deputies found an abandoned vehicle on Polowana Road, which had been there for at least three days. The license plate indicated the vehicle’s owner was Rawlings. The road is near where his body was found.
The Sheriff’s Office tried to find Rawlings using blood hounds and the aviation unit, but was unsuccessful.
The cause and manner of death had not been determined Thursday. Forensic pathologists at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston were awaiting results from toxicology and other medical reports.
Before his disappearance
Rawlings’ father, Phillip Rawlings Sr., recently told the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper that he and Rawling’s mother thought their son was going to the store when he left their home on March 31. They later discovered he’d taken all his clothes and had left.
The first sign of him since that day was the discovery of his truck on St. Helena.
Before moving back home with his parents, Rawlings lived in Starke, Fla. A deputy there took him to a hospital after finding him “sort of delusional, starving to death,” in a park, his father told the Advertiser.
His parents were concerned for him because he suffered from bipolar disorder and required daily medication, his father said.
Rawlings was a 1999 graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina and earned a medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham before practicing medicine in Mobile, Ala.
His parents said he had no known connections to South Carolina.
This story was originally published May 28, 2020 at 5:50 PM.
