Friends, family gather at place where missing Winston-Salem man's body was found

As the sun set on Friday, police had found the body of Kim Tyler Whitehurst, 69, in a creek off Minart, a neighborhood of longtime residents and well-kept houses, less than a mile from Whitehurst’s apartment at Forsyth Court, an independent living facility on Reynolda Road.

Until that moment, John Shuler had held out hope they would find Whitehurst, sitting in one of the buildings on their old church campus at Reynolda Presbyterian Church.

Whitehurst had mischievously kept a key to the place long after he had stopped attending church there. Whitehurst would sometimes talk Shuler into meeting at the church for conversation and breakfast.

During the weeks of wondering where his friend was, Shuler went the church and knocked on the door, hoping Whitehurst would answer.

Whitehurst and Shuler were Christian counselors. Shuler called Whitehurst the best one he knew. Whitehurst was a nonconformist, Shuler said. He didn’t care about the rules. But he wasn’t that way because he was spiteful, or because he wanted to make people angry.

He just wanted to help the people he counseled.

“Sessions would usually last 50 or 60 minutes,” Shuler said. “Not with Kim. He wouldn’t stop until he knew he had helped that person.”

Shuler searched the area near Forsyth Holiday Court during his time off from work.

On Saturday morning, he bent down at the site where Whitehurst had been found and wept.

“He did his work with such passion,” Shuler said. “He just had a heart for people.”

The night before, a Winston-Salem police detective gathered Whitehurst’s family around him at the edge of the neighborhood and told them they had identified the body in the creek as their father.

They cried with one another, standing in the cold. Later, Whitehurst’s sons, daughters, sisters, and others drove farther into the neighborhood and stood over the ravine where he had been found.

“We were out here for days, and it’s just unimaginable,” Sarah Whitehurst said. “But he was right underneath our noses, and we knew kind of the whole time that he would be.”

On Facebook, where Whitehurst’s children had built a 1,000-plus member group of searchers, Sam Tyler Whitehurst wrote that the family had been notified that their father had been found and that they were in shock and “heavy with sadness.”

“You provided as much as you could. I’m so glad we were able to discuss our problems and solve them together. We are all imperfect in a non-perfect world,” Whitehurst wrote in a Facebook post. “You tried hard to give us what we needed and sometimes what we wanted. Thank you dad.”

After Whitehurst went missing, the Winston-Salem Police Department sent out endangered alerts for him and assigned police officers to search for Whitehurst, who suffered from cognitive issues.

Search parties, thermal drones, K-9 units, and helicopters traversed miles-long grid areas near Forsyth Holiday Court, an independent living facility at 2945 Reynolda Road, where the last images of Whitehurst were captured at 2:45 a.m. on Jan. 5 by security cameras. The cameras captured the 6 foot 2 inch man walking off into the night.

Since that time, Winston-Salem received its heaviest snowfall in years and temperatures descended into the low teens.

Lawrence Blair, who lives on Minart Drive and was one of the people who found Whitehurst, directed Shuler on Saturday morning to where Whitehurst was found.

“I’m sorry you lost your friend,” Blair said.

On Friday, in the late afternoon, a mailman delivering a package to a house saw Whitehurst lying in the stream at the bottom of a small ravine.

The mailman called the police after notifying the property owners. The mailman asked Blair to go with him as he went closer to Whitehurst.

The property owners, who have lived on the land for 42 years, said in a statement that the creek on the property has become a hazard.

“We used to be able to walk across the creek,” they said. “Since the city closed the lake on Bonbrook and with additional construction all the runoff comes our way. The creek is so much wider and deeper, making it a hazard.”

Other neighbors said they were shocked by the event and deeply saddened for Whitehurst’s family. By all accounts, Minart Drive is a quiet neighborhood with homeowners who have lived there for decades.

“It’s just a horrible circumstance,” said Tripp Jeffers, who lives two houses from where Whitehurst was found. “We had hoped and prayed for a happier ending. We’re hoping the family gets some closure.”

Jeffers said it shocked him that Whitehurst wasn’t found earlier, because police dogs had already searched the neighborhood and nearby Bethabara Park.

“We’re a little shocked that if he had been down there for that long, that he wasn’t found,” Jeffers said.

Other neighbors, such as Robert Ely and Blair, who live across from the creek, remarked that the water level had been much higher in earlier days and must have receded.

“The neighbor across the street said sometimes it can get up to six feet deep,” Ely said. “Especially if we have a lot of rain.”

Shuler, who worked with Whitehurst for years within the Association for Christian Counseling, left flowers for his friend Saturday morning.

When asked what he would miss most about Whitehurst, Shuler reflected on Whitehurst’s authenticity. He was a man who had a sharp sense of humor, and someone who never had enemies. All he did was help people, Shuler said.

“What you saw from Kim was what you got,” Shuler said. “You didn’t have to worry about where Kim was coming from, because he would tell you where he was coming from.”