Authorities suspend search for missing man

Feb. 3—SPARTA, Ga. — After an intensified ground and air search in thickly wooded areas around Lake Sinclair, authorities have suspended the search for a missing Sparta man.

The exhaustive efforts on behalf of local and state law enforcement authorities failed to produce a lead on the whereabouts of 67-year-old Horace Kennedy Jr., according to Hancock County Sheriff's Office Chief Investigator Thomas Resha.

"Since there has been no confirmed sightings of Mr. Kennedy, we have decided to suspend our physical search for him at this time,"Resha told The Union-Recorder in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon.

The search turned up no leads.

"At this point, we're hoping that somebody sees the media reports and says, 'Yeah man, I gave him a ride to Greensboro or Eatonton or somewhere,'" Resha said. "For all we know at this time, he contacted someone, and they gave him a ride to the nearest Greyhound bus station, he got on a bus and flew the coop."

Resha said he and others involved in the search hope that someone might see the missing person story in the paper or see something about it on television and call them.

"That's our hope at this time ... we can close the case, but ... so we can let his family here know that he is safe," Resha said.

Searches were made at dozens of residences around the Lake Sinclair Villages as authorities were actively involved in their search.

"We checked doors of residences where people have lakehouses, as well as sheds and other outside buildings for this man," Resha said.

He suggested that residents living in the neighborhood of the lake check their outside buildings, sheds and other places on their property to make sure the man didn't go into one of them to escape the cold nights where temperatures plummeted to below freezing.

Deputies with the Hancock County Sheriff's Office, as well as officers with the Milledgeville Police Department, special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 6 Office in Milledgeville, and troopers with the Georgia State Patrol post in Milledgeville were involved in the search.

At one point during the search a Milledgeville Police Department drone was used to try and find the missing man.

"We were glad to try to do whatever we could do to help find this man," said Milledgeville Police Department Maj. Linc Boyer, commander of the road patrol division.

Kennedy is known to ramble or travel, the veteran lawman said.

Described as a white male, standing 5-feet-4 and weighing approximately 140 pounds, Kennedy walked away from the residence of niece Keena Catlett on Sinclair Lake Drive near Lake Sinclair last Saturday afternoon.

He hasn't been seen since.

Catlett said her uncle who had previously lived in other places in Georgia and in Pennsylvania for at least a year before moving in with her.

During the time Kennedy lived with his niece, Catlett said he enjoyed sitting in the living room.

"He loved watching those cowboy movies," she said.

Anyone with information as to the whereabouts of Kennedy, who has a heart condition and takes medication, is asked to call the Hancock County Sheriff's Office at 706-444-6471.