Philadelphia police find body believed to be that of missing woman Kada Scott. ‘No one is happy this is the ending.’
Kada Scott was last seen Oct. 4 at her workplace in Chestnut Hill. A man was charged last week with kidnapping her.
Philadelphia police have found what they believe to be the body of Kada Scott, law enforcement officials said Saturday, a discovery that ends the two-week search for the woman police say was kidnapped from her workplace earlier this month.
The corpse was found in a shallow grave in the woods on the grounds of the closed Ada H.H. Lewis Middle School in East Germantown, Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford said.
Stanford, in a news conference outside the school Saturday evening, said the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office would have to confirm the identity of the remains and determine the cause of death.
But investigators are all but certain it is Scott.
“No one is happy that this is the ending,” Stanford said.
Stanford said a tip led police back to the school grounds Saturday, an area investigators had searched earlier this week and found Scott’s debit card and pink phone case.
The new tip, he said, “was very specific as to detailing us and directing us to a specific location in the wooded area” around the school.
The size and depths woods, he said, had made earlier searches of the grounds challenging.
The discovery came just hours before Scott’s family was set to join members of the community to search the area around Awbury Arboretum in their desperation to find any piece of evidence that could lead police to her location.
Scott’s father, a day earlier, told The Inquirer he was holding onto hope that his daughter would return home.
But that was not to be.
Keon King, 21, was taken into custody earlier this week and charged with kidnapping Scott after police said they linked him to her disappearance.
King was the last person in contact with Scott before she went missing, investigators said, and cell phone location data placed him with Scott just before her phone line went dead.
Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski said prosecutors would wait for additional information from the medical examiner’s office and the police before determining whether they would charge King with additional crimes.
Scott, 23, of the Ivy Hill section of East Mount Airy, had just started her overnight shift at a Chestnut Hill nursing home when she walked outside around 10 p.m. — and never returned.
Police said Scott, a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, had told family and friends that someone had been harassing her in the days before she went missing.
For the last two weeks, local and federal investigators have worked frantically to find Scott, who they feared was in grave danger and might have been killed. They pored over surveillance footage, text messages, and cell phone location data, and conducted interviews with dozens of people who eventually led them to King.
And then they learned of what police said was King’s history of domestic violence — including that he had previously been charged with kidnapping an ex-girlfriend and trying to strangle her. Those charges were dismissed, though, after the alleged victim failed to appear in court, a decision District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office now says it regrets.
But Krasner also complained that even though prosecutors had asked for $999,999 bail, the bail magistrate set it much lower, allowing King to post the necessary funds and be released.
Krasner said King’s release may have been what discouraged the victim from coming to court, leading prosecutors to withdraw the case.
“Ultimately the buck stops here,” Krasner said at a news conference Friday.
King was arrested in December 2024 and charged with burglary, strangulation, and related crimes after police said he broke into his ex-girlfriend’s Strawberry Mansion house and tried to choke her.
Then, in January, court records show, he again tried to break into the woman’s home. When he couldn’t get inside, he waited outside for her to leave, the records say, then dragged her by her hair and threw her in his car. He assaulted her as he drove around before letting her go, according to the records.
King was arrested in April in that attack and charged with kidnapping, strangulation, and related crimes. Prosecutors asked for nearly $1 million bail, but the magistrate set it at $200,000, records show.
King immediately posted the necessary $20,000 and was released.
On Saturday, as police gathered evidence outside the school, where investigators found what they believe to be Scott’s body, some bystanders were angry that it took two weeks to find her corpse.
“You failed her!” some onlookers yelled at police.
At Saturday’s news conference, Stanford said he understood the heightened emotions of the moment. “This could have been any one of our family members,“ he said.
“However,” he added, “I know what we have done and the amount of hours that have been put into this process.”
Local and federal investigators worked day and night over the last two weeks, focusing in on the grounds around the school and arboretum after King’s cell phone location data showed him in the area the night Scott disappeared, according to a law enforcement source.
Police searched the grounds multiple times, and even shut down the police academy to have the entire new class of rookie officers comb the area, Stanford said. Dogs trained in locating human remains had even been in the woods but didn’t find Scott’s body, he said.
“When you know that you’re looking for something, but don’t know where someone hid it, it’s not that easy of a process,” he said.
But the specificity of Saturday’s tip led detectives back to the woods behind the school. And there, beyond debris, police found the body of a young woman buried in a shallow grave, said the source, who asked not to be identified to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Scott was born and raised in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia. She studied communications at Pennsylvania State University, and moved home after graduating last year, her father said.
She loved fashion and music, he said, and loved spending time with friends, traveling and going to parties.
Seated at his dining room table on Friday, Kevin Scott recalled some of his most precious memories of his daughter, reimagining her singing to Hannah Montana in her room, and carrying a look-alike doll of the Disney Channel Star. And taking her to see Rihanna — her first concert — at the waterfront pavilion in Camden.
Her body was found not far from where she lived with her mother and 17-year-old sister.