Georgia · Columbus, Muscogee County · Missing & Alerts

Columbus, GA Police Seek Missing Man Keith Teague, 57

Keith Teague, 57, was last seen July 28 in the 700 block of 6th Avenue. Columbus police have asked the public for help. Here is his description, the numbers to call, and a plain account of how thin the public record is.

This is a reference card, not a map, and it is not to scale in any sense — it plots nothing. It exists so a reader can screenshot the description and the three numbers in one piece. Everything on it comes from WTVM.

What Columbus police are asking the public to do

WTVM reported that Columbus police are seeking the public's help locating 57-year-old Keith Teague. That single sentence is the whole of the news here, and the rest of this page exists to make it useful rather than to dress it up.

An appeal is a specific kind of statement. A police department does not put a name, an age, a height and a weight in front of the public because a file needs padding. It does it because the department has run out of the leads it can develop on its own and needs the one thing it cannot generate internally: somebody who happened to be on a sidewalk, in a parking lot, behind a counter or at a bus stop and remembers a face.

So the most useful thing this page can do is put the searchable details in front of as many people as possible, in the order a person would actually use them. Everything below is reproduced from WTVM's report, and nothing has been added to it.

Read the fact card and the reference panel above before you read another word of analysis. If you recognize the description, stop reading and call.

The description, exactly as it was published

WTVM reported that Teague has black hair and brown eyes, weighs 145 pounds, and is 5 feet 5 inches tall.

Five feet five and 145 pounds is a build worth pausing on, because it is the kind of detail a witness actually retains. Height and weight are what somebody remembers about a stranger three days later when a clothing description has long since evaporated. They are also what somebody working a shelter intake desk, an emergency room registration screen or a hospital admissions log is matching against.

That description is the complete physical record in the material compiled for this page. There is no listed tattoo, no scar, no eyewear, no facial hair note, no vehicle and no phone number associated with him in this record. If a repost of this story adds one of those, it did not get it from here.

We are reproducing the description in full and in plain text on purpose. A description that lives only inside an image cannot be searched, cannot be read aloud by a screen reader, and cannot be copied into a text message by a person who wants to send it to a friend who drives that route. Written out, it can.

Who to call, and which number does what

WTVM reported three ways to reach someone, and they are not interchangeable.

• 911 — WTVM reported that the public is asked to call 911 with information. This is the number for right now. If you believe you are looking at Keith Teague, or you just saw someone matching that description, this is the call. Do not wait to be sure. Do not try to detain anybody.
• Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit, 706-225-3449 — WTVM reported that tips can also be directed here. This is the number for information rather than an emergency: where he has stayed, who he was in contact with, a place he is known to go, a sighting from days ago that you were not sure was worth reporting.
• Sergeant Joseph Jackson, 706-225-4399 — WTVM reported that tips can also be directed to Sergeant Joseph Jackson at that number. The material compiled for this page names the sergeant and the number, and does not state which agency or unit he sits in. We are not going to assume he belongs to the Special Victims Unit simply because his name appeared near it in a news report. Sitting next to something is not the same as being part of it, and this site has been burned by exactly that assumption before.

A tip you think is worthless is the kind that closes cases. "I think I saw a short man with black hair near there about two weeks ago" is not a waste of a detective's time. It is a data point on a map that currently has one dot on it.

Where he was last seen: the 700 block of 6th Avenue

WTVM reported that Teague was last seen on July 28 in the 700 block of 6th Avenue.

That is a block, not an address, and this page keeps it that way. No source compiled for this page published map coordinates, so there is no pin here, no satellite view, no driving route and no street number. People live on that block, and a missing-person appeal is not a reason to point traffic at somebody's front door.

A word about the county, because county names are where Georgia stories get mangled. Columbus is the seat of Muscogee County and shares a consolidated city-county government with it, which is why this report files under Muscogee County. That relationship is general background from The Local Alert and is not attributed to WTVM. There are other places called Columbus in other states, and there are other counties named Muscogee-adjacent things in search results. This report concerns Columbus, Georgia, and the agency named in the reporting is the Columbus Police Department.

What a last-seen block is good for is narrowing where the useful memories live. If you work, drive, deliver, ride a bus or walk a dog anywhere near 6th Avenue, you are in the group of people whose recollection of late July is worth something.

July 28, and what the gap since then means

WTVM reported the last-seen date as July 28. The ledger compiled for this page records the year as 2026, and records the police appeal as published Aug. 12, 2026.

From July 28 to Aug. 12 is 15 days. That figure is arithmetic by The Local Alert, not a number WTVM printed, and we are labeling it rather than laundering it into an outlet's mouth.

Fifteen days is worth stating plainly because of what it does to memory. Two weeks is roughly the point at which an ordinary person stops being able to place an ordinary day. Ask somebody what they saw last Tuesday and you may get an answer. Ask what they saw on July 28 and most people need an anchor — a shift, a delivery, a doctor's appointment, a game, a payday, a receipt, a dashcam file that has not been overwritten yet.

So if you are trying to remember, work backward from something fixed rather than from the date itself. Camera footage is the other clock that matters: a lot of consumer and small-business systems overwrite on a two-week or 30-day loop, which is exactly the window this case has now moved into. That observation about how such systems typically behave is background from The Local Alert and is not attributed to any source on this page.

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Why "unknown clothing" changes the search

WTVM reported that it is unknown what Teague was wearing at the time of his disappearance.

That is an affirmative statement in the report, not a hole in it, and it is more consequential than it looks. In most missing-person appeals, clothing is the single most quoted line, because clothing is what a stranger scanning a treeline or a parking lot can actually match at a distance. Here there is none.

Which means the description carries the entire load. Black hair. Brown eyes. One hundred forty-five pounds. Five feet five inches. Fifty-seven years old. Those five facts are what a witness has to work with, and it is why this page reproduces them three separate times rather than mentioning them once and moving on.

It also changes what a useful tip looks like. Without clothing, a sighting is not confirmed or eliminated by "he was wearing a red shirt." Report what you saw anyway and let the detective sort it out. The threshold for calling is low, and it should be.

The circumstances are not in this record

Here is the part where most aggregators start guessing, so here is the direct answer instead: the material compiled for this page records nothing about the circumstances of Keith Teague's disappearance.

No account of what he was doing that day. No mention of a vehicle. No mention of a destination. No mention of who last spoke to him. No characterization of the case as endangered, voluntary or anything else.

The Local Alert is not going to supply a theory in the absence of one. Not foul play, not a medical explanation, not a family explanation, not anything. There is a specific reason for that beyond ordinary caution: in missing-adult cases, a speculative framing published by a website travels faster than the correction, and it changes how a stranger reacts to a sighting. A page that hints at one explanation quietly discourages people from reporting sightings that fit a different one.

So this page holds the line at what a named newsroom actually published: a man is missing, here is what he looks like, here is where he was last seen, here is who to call.

One newsroom, one report

Every fact on this page traces to one Aug. 12, 2026 report by WTVM, the Columbus television station. There is no second outlet in the material compiled here, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise by using words like "reports say" or "officials confirmed to multiple outlets."

What single-sourcing does and does not mean is worth being precise about, because readers are routinely misled in both directions.

• It does not mean the information is doubtful. A local station publishing a police appeal is reproducing an agency's own release. That is about as close to the primary document as consumer news gets.
• It does mean nothing here has been independently checked by a second newsroom. No one has re-asked the department, re-read the release, or caught a transposed digit in a phone number.
• It does mean the record is thin rather than contradictory. There is no dispute on this page because there is nobody to dispute with.
• It does mean the details that usually come from a second or third story — a family interview, a search update, a resolution — are simply not here.

That is the honest shape of this page: one report, faithfully reproduced, with the analysis clearly separated from it.

Where our sources differ

Our source-comparison table normally exists to show two newsrooms disagreeing. This time it does something more useful for a reader: it shows exactly which claim rests on which report, and which lines on this page are ours rather than anyone else's.

Read the right-hand column first. Seven rows rest on a single newsroom, two rows are explicitly unestablished, and three rows are ours and labeled as ours. That is a more honest picture than a page that simply asserts twelve things in a confident voice.

Which agency is looking — and which are not named here

One agency runs through this coverage: the Columbus Police Department. WTVM reported that Columbus police are seeking the public's help, and that tips can be directed to the Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit.

Georgia agencies are not interchangeable, and this is where careless aggregation does real damage. A city police department, a county sheriff's office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia State Patrol have different jurisdictions, different case files and different phone numbers. Calling the wrong one does not get your tip forwarded; it gets you a polite redirect and a lost afternoon.

To be exact about what those "not named" rows mean: they describe this compilation. They are not a claim about what any agency is or is not doing, and they are not a claim about what WTVM did or did not publish beyond the lines quoted here.

What a Special Victims Unit is doing on a missing-adult case

Readers who see "Special Victims Unit" attached to a missing-person appeal frequently read something into it. Before anyone does that here, a plain statement: the material compiled for this page records the unit as a tip line and nothing more. WTVM reported that tips can be directed to the Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit at 706-225-3449. That is the entirety of it.

As general background, and not as a statement about this case: the internal name a department gives a unit reflects that department's own organizational chart, and unit names are not standardized across Georgia. What one agency calls a special victims unit, another calls a persons crimes unit, a special operations division or a criminal investigations division. Missing-person cases involving adults are commonly assigned to whichever investigative unit a department has designated for them, and the name on the door does not by itself characterize a case.

Drawing an inference from a unit name would be exactly the kind of speculation this page has refused everywhere else, so it is refused here too.

How a missing-adult case works in Georgia

Everything in this section is general background from The Local Alert. None of it is attributed to WTVM, and none of it is a statement about what has happened in Keith Teague's case.

Adults occupy an unusual position in missing-person work. An adult has the legal right to go where they like, cut off contact, change address and decline to be found. That right is real and it does not disappear because a family is frightened. At the same time, a police department that receives a credible report of a missing adult takes the report and works it — the person's autonomy is a factor in how a case is characterized, not a reason to refuse it.

In broad strokes, the sequence looks like this:

• A report is taken by the agency with jurisdiction where the person was last seen or where they live.
• A record is created and, in the ordinary course, entered into the national and state databases described further down.
• The obvious checks run first: hospitals, jails, shelters, known addresses, known associates, phone and financial activity where legal process allows.
• A public appeal follows when the internal leads run out or when a department decides that public eyes are the fastest route. That is the stage this case has visibly reached.
• Additional resources are requested if the department judges them warranted — searches, canine, aviation, specialized analysts.

What a family often finds hardest to accept is how much of this is invisible from the outside. A department that has said nothing publicly for two weeks is not necessarily a department that has done nothing for two weeks, and a public appeal is not an admission of failure. It is a tool, and it is the one tool that requires ordinary people to work.

Why there is no 24-hour waiting period

This is general background from The Local Alert, and it is here because the myth it corrects costs people time they cannot get back.

You do not have to wait 24 hours to report an adult missing. There is no such rule. It is a television convention that hardened into folk knowledge, and it is wrong. Agencies take missing-person reports when they are made.

The reason it matters is arithmetic, not sentiment. Camera footage overwrites. Witnesses forget. Phones die. A report made on the first day starts clocks that a report made on the third day cannot restart. Anyone who has ever been told to "give it a day" by a well-meaning relative should know that the advice has no legal basis behind it.

If an agency ever declines to take a report, ask for a supervisor, ask for the reason in writing, and take the report to the agency with jurisdiction over the place the person was last seen. None of this is a comment on the Columbus Police Department, which in this case has publicly asked for help. It is the general advice, offered because this page is read by people in other situations too.

What a Mattie's Call is, and when it applies to an adult

Georgia’s public alert for missing adults who are elderly or have a qualifying impairment is Mattie’s Call, and it is the question readers ask most often when an adult goes missing, so it is answered here as background.

The material compiled for this page records a public appeal from the Columbus Police Department, reported by WTVM. It does not record a Mattie's Call or any other statewide alert. That is a statement about this compilation, not a statement about what any agency has or has not done, and nobody should read it as either the presence or the absence of an alert.

As general background: a Mattie's Call is Georgia's alert for a missing person who is elderly or who has a cognitive impairment or a disability — the adult counterpart to the Amber Alert system for children. The distinguishing feature is that it turns on that condition rather than simply on the fact that someone is missing. An adult without a qualifying condition can be genuinely missing, genuinely at risk and genuinely the subject of an active police search without a Mattie's Call being available at all.

That is the point worth carrying away: the absence of a statewide alert is not evidence that a case is unimportant. It is usually evidence about eligibility criteria. The tool that is being used here, a public appeal with a description and a phone number, is the tool that fits, and it works only if people pass it on.

NCIC, GCIC and NamUs: where a missing person's record lives

General background from The Local Alert. Whether any of these records exists for Keith Teague is not established by the material compiled for this page, and this page does not guess.

• NCIC is the FBI's National Crime Information Center. Its Missing Person File is the national record that law enforcement agencies enter into and query. A record in NCIC is what allows an officer eight states away, running a name at 3 a.m., to see that somebody is looking.
• GCIC is the Georgia Crime Information Center, the state-level system through which Georgia agencies' entries move. It is administered by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Saying so is a statement about who runs a database, and it is emphatically not a statement that the GBI is involved in this case.
• NamUs is the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a federally funded database that is publicly searchable and that families can submit a case to directly. That last point is the one most families do not know: a NamUs entry does not require an agency to initiate it.

These systems answer different questions. NCIC and GCIC are law enforcement tools that connect a traffic stop to an open case. NamUs is the public-facing system that connects a missing-person record to an unidentified-person record, sometimes years later, and it is the one an ordinary member of the public can actually search.

How searches are organized, and who decides

General background from The Local Alert. Whether any organized search has been conducted for Keith Teague is not recorded in the material compiled for this page.

The decision belongs to the lead agency. A ground search is not something a volunteer group, a family or a news outlet can authorize, and the reason is practical rather than territorial: an uncoordinated search destroys the very ground evidence a coordinated one is trying to preserve, and it puts untrained people into terrain, water and traffic.

When a lead agency decides a search is warranted, it can reach for resources beyond its own roster — county emergency management, trained search and rescue teams, canine units, aviation, and analysts who work phone and financial records. Urban searches look nothing like wilderness searches: in a city, the "search" is often a canvass, a camera pull and a shelter and hospital sweep rather than a line of people walking a field.

If you want to help and there is no organized effort you can join, the highest-value thing an ordinary person can do is unglamorous. Share the description. Check your own camera footage for the relevant dates if you live or work near the area. Call the tip line with something small. A canvass is built out of small things.

Do not organize a search of private property, do not confront anyone, and do not post accusations. Every one of those makes an investigator's job harder, and in a case with this little public information, it also generates noise that buries the real sightings.

Ask VIC

Georgia victim assistance line

Get your questions answered.Free, any hour.

Ask what happens next, who pays for what, and what nobody is required to sign.

Answers for victims and their families.A real person, around the clock.Nothing to fill out. Nothing to sign.

(855) 5-ASKVIC (527-5842)

Free24/7Any question

What to do if you think you have seen him

Practical, in order.

• If it is happening now, call 911. WTVM reported that the public is asked to call 911 with information. Do not follow, do not detain, do not approach in a way that would alarm someone.
• Note the time and the exact place before you do anything else. Memory degrades within minutes. A time and a cross street are worth more than a paragraph of description written an hour later.
• Do not delete anything. If you have dashcam, doorbell or security footage from on or after July 28 near the 700 block of 6th Avenue, preserve it now. Many systems overwrite automatically, and the two-week mark has already passed.
• Report a sighting you are unsure about. A detective would rather rule out ten wrong men than miss the right one. Uncertainty is not a reason to stay quiet.
• Use the tip numbers for non-urgent information: the Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit at 706-225-3449, or Sergeant Joseph Jackson at 706-225-4399, both per WTVM.
• Do not post a suspected sighting publicly instead of calling. A social post reaches an audience. A phone call reaches the file.

If you are the family: what to ask for

General background, offered because families reading a page like this at midnight rarely have anyone to ask.

Ask the lead agency for the case number and the name of the assigned investigator, and write both down. Ask whether the case has been entered into NCIC, and ask whether a NamUs record exists — and remember that a family can create a NamUs record without waiting for an agency to do it. Ask what specific information would help most right now, because the answer changes week to week and it is usually more concrete than a family expects.

Keep your own timeline: last confirmed contact, last confirmed sighting, phone activity, financial activity, vehicles, the names of people who saw him last. Investigators build the same document, and a family's version is frequently better because a family knows which details are out of character.

The Local Alert is not a law enforcement agency and not a law firm. We cannot tell you what to sign, who to talk to, or what any of this means for your particular situation, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Why there is no photograph on this page

This site does not republish news photographs or law enforcement handout images, on any story. That rule is not a judgment about this case, and it is not a suggestion that a photograph would be unhelpful — in a missing-person appeal, a face plainly is helpful.

What we do instead is reproduce the written description in full, in plain text, three times on this page, so that it can be searched, read aloud, copied and forwarded. And we link WTVM directly, so a reader who wants the imagery goes to the newsroom that published the appeal rather than to a copy of it.

If you are going to share one thing from this page, share the description and the phone numbers. Those are the parts that work in a text message.

What we don't know yet

Nothing above is filled in by inference. This page is a record of what was established at the moment it was written. It does not update itself, and it will not tell you tomorrow what it could not tell you tonight.

Records, and what this page will not tell you

The Columbus Police Department is the agency named in WTVM's report, so a request under the Georgia Open Records Act goes to that department — not to a sheriff's office, and not to the state.

The Local Alert is not publishing a mailing address, an email address, a records phone number or a fee schedule for that office, because the material compiled for this page does not establish one. A plausible-looking guess is worse than an admission, and a wrong address costs a family a week they do not have. Get the current records contact from the department itself.

Two things are worth knowing before anyone files. Records tied to an open investigation are routinely withheld while the investigation is active, and that answer is procedural rather than personal. And the tip numbers published above are not records numbers. The Special Victims Unit line at 706-225-3449 and Sergeant Joseph Jackson's line at 706-225-4399 were published by WTVM as places to send information about Keith Teague. Using them to chase paperwork ties up a line that somebody with a sighting may be trying to reach.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Keith Teague?
Keith Teague is a 57-year-old man reported missing in Columbus, Georgia. WTVM reported that the Columbus Police Department is seeking the public's help locating him, and identified him as 57-year-old Keith Teague. WTVM is the only outlet in the material compiled for this page, so everything on this page about him traces back to that one report.

When and where was Keith Teague last seen?
WTVM reported that Teague was last seen on July 28 in the 700 block of 6th Avenue. The ledger compiled for this page records the year as 2026 and records the police appeal as published Aug. 12, 2026. Counting from July 28 to Aug. 12 gives 15 days, and that count is arithmetic by The Local Alert rather than a figure WTVM printed.

What does Keith Teague look like?
WTVM reported that Teague has black hair and brown eyes, weighs 145 pounds, and is 5 feet 5 inches tall. That is the full description in the material compiled for this page. No age-progression detail, no tattoos, no scars, no glasses and no vehicle appear in this record.

What was Keith Teague wearing when he went missing?
It is not known. WTVM reported that it is unknown what he was wearing at the time of his disappearance. That is an affirmative statement in the report, not a gap in it, and it means anyone looking for him is working from height, weight, hair and eyes rather than from clothing.

Who do I call if I have seen Keith Teague?
WTVM reported that the public is asked to call 911 with information. WTVM also reported that tips can be directed to the Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit at 706-225-3449, and to Sergeant Joseph Jackson at 706-225-4399. Call 911 first if you are looking at someone right now. Use the tip numbers for information about where he has been, who he was with, or where he might be.

Which police department is looking for Keith Teague?
The Columbus Police Department. WTVM reported that Columbus police are seeking the public's help locating Teague, and that tips can go to the Columbus Police Department Special Victims Unit at 706-225-3449. The material compiled for this page does not record a role for the Muscogee County Sheriff's Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation or the Georgia State Patrol, and those agencies are not interchangeable with a city police department.

Is Keith Teague still missing?
The ledger compiled for this page records that Teague had not been located as of the Aug. 12, 2026 report, and records nothing after that date. This page is a snapshot of one evening. It does not refresh itself, and a person can be found an hour after a page like this is written. Treat the Columbus Police Department as the authority on the current status, not this page.

Do the police know what happened to Keith Teague?
The material compiled for this page records a description, a last-seen date, a last-seen block and three phone numbers. It records nothing about the circumstances of his disappearance. The Local Alert is not going to fill that space. No theory of foul play, no medical theory and no theory of any other kind appears on this page, because inventing one would be worse than saying plainly that the public record here is thin.

How many outlets have reported this?
One. Every fact on this page traces to a single Aug. 12, 2026 report by WTVM, the Columbus television station. Single-sourced is not the same as wrong, but it does mean nothing here has been independently confirmed by a second newsroom, and this page says so rather than implying a consensus that has not been demonstrated.

Was a Mattie's Call issued for Keith Teague?
The material compiled for this page records a public appeal from the Columbus Police Department, reported by WTVM. It does not record a Mattie's Call or any other statewide alert. That is a statement about this compilation, not a statement about what any agency has or has not done. A Mattie's Call is Georgia's alert for a missing person who is elderly or has a cognitive impairment or disability, and it turns on that condition rather than on age alone. That general description of the program is background from The Local Alert and is not attributed to WTVM.

Do you have to wait 24 hours to report an adult missing in Georgia?
No. The 24-hour rule is a myth, and it is one of the most damaging myths in missing-person cases because the first hours are when a trail is freshest. Law enforcement agencies take missing-adult reports immediately. This answer is general background from The Local Alert and is not attributed to WTVM or to any agency named on this page.

What is NCIC, and is Keith Teague in it?
NCIC is the FBI's National Crime Information Center, which holds a Missing Person File that law enforcement agencies enter records into and query nationwide. In Georgia those entries also move through the Georgia Crime Information Center. Whether a record exists for Keith Teague is not something the material compiled for this page establishes, and this page does not guess. The description of what NCIC is comes from The Local Alert as background.

What is NamUs?
NamUs is the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a federally funded database that families and the public can search, and that families can submit a case to themselves rather than waiting on an agency. It is separate from NCIC. This description is background from The Local Alert and is not attributed to any outlet or agency named on this page.

Why is there no photograph of Keith Teague on this page?
The Local Alert does not republish news photographs or law enforcement handout images. That is a standing rule for every story on this site and it is not a comment on this case. If you want to see what he looks like, open the WTVM report linked in the sources at the bottom of this page and look at it there. The written description, black hair, brown eyes, 145 pounds and 5 feet 5 inches tall, is reproduced here in full.

How are searches for a missing adult organized in Georgia?
In general terms, the agency that took the report leads, and it decides whether to request additional resources such as county emergency management, search and rescue teams, K-9 units or aviation. A formal ground search is a request the lead agency makes, not something a volunteer group can authorize on its own. Whether any search of that kind has been organized for Keith Teague is not recorded in the material compiled for this page. The general description of how the process works is background from The Local Alert.

How do I get a copy of the Columbus police missing-person report?
The Columbus Police Department is the agency named in WTVM's report, so a request under the Georgia Open Records Act goes to that department. The Local Alert is not publishing a mailing address, an email address, a records phone number or a fee schedule for that office, because the material compiled for this page does not establish one and a wrong address wastes a family's week. Records tied to an open investigation are routinely withheld while the investigation is active.