ATLANTA—When Derek Samuel, a 20-year-old Black man, stopped communicating with his twin sister, his family grew concerned. 

“She was like, ‘Mom, I haven’t spoken to Derek,’ and I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’” his mother, Nishae Samuel, said to 11Alive, Atlanta’s NBC affiliate.  She said her son had gone to the store with friends but stayed behind after the group separated, 11Alive reported.

Derek Samuel disappeared after leaving a Target store in East Point, Georgia, on April 29.  His family filed a missing person’s report on April 30.  Human remains later found in a wooded area behind an apartment complex were believed by police and family members to be Derek Samuel’s.

Despite being missing for an entire month, Mr. Samuel’s story did not reach national media outlets. 

Research shows that when a young White woman or girl goes missing, she receives massive news coverage and broad public attention. But when the skin color and/or gender change, a different picture is painted.

More than 560,000 people were reported missing in 2023, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, Inc.  Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population but account for nearly 40% of all missing persons.

“Thousands of people are reported missing every year in the U.S.  And while not every case will get widespread media attention, the coverage of White” and non-White victims “is far from proportionate,” the foundation says on a webpage displaying the numbers.

In recent years, more attention has been on missing and murdered Black women and girls, highlighting racial disparities between media coverage and law enforcement search efforts for White women versus Black women. But Black men are often another forgotten population.

“Not only are missing Blacks and missing men less likely at the outset to garner media coverage than other types of missing persons, but they also receive a lower intensity of coverage when their stories are, in fact, picked up by news outlets,” Zach Sommers.

A law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, wrote in an article analyzing race and gender disparities in online news coverage of missing persons, published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology in spring 2016.

His research focused on race, perceptions and media coverage of crime. “Women and girls are more readily accepted as victims that need saving, and White women and girls in particular are more easily seen as ‘universal’ victims with whom all viewers and readers can identify,” he wrote.

He noted that discussions about “Missing White Woman Syndrome”—the term describing the disproportionate media attention missing White women receive—often overlook men and boys, and his findings indicated that missing men, especially Black men, receive substantially less attention than White women and girls.

In Georgia alone, several Black men have gone missing from January 2025 to May 2026 with relatively little sustained media coverage.

Christopher McKoy, 34, was last seen in the Norcross, Georgia, area of metro Atlanta on January 7, 2025.  He had been driving for a rideshare service and had crashed his car on the day he disappeared, 11Alive reported. Police only found his car.

A review of online news coverage found only a handful of stories from Atlanta-area outlets, including Fox 5 Atlanta, 11Alive and WSB-TV, Atlanta’s ABC affiliate, published between Jan. 14 and Jan. 29, 2025.

Mr. McKoy’s parents, Bernard and Jackie McKoy, have posted on Facebook several times since their son’s disappearance, reminding the public that the family is still searching. His mother’s last post, dated January 16 of this year, simply said, “Still missing!”

In another case, Timothy McSears, 65, was last seen at his home in LaFayette, Georgia, in Walker County, on March 6, 2025.  A review of online news coverage found a few stories from local outlets in 2025 and a few more in March 2026, marking one year since his disappearance. The Walker County Sheriff’s Office has classified the case as a large-scale and ongoing investigation, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.

Gregory McNeal, 56, has been missing since September 16, 2025. He was staying at a hotel in Richmond Hill, Georgia, near Savannah, for work. Footage from a Ring doorbell camera showed him running through a backyard with apparent injuries to his face. A review of online news coverage found six news stories from local outlets published in September, October and November. 

His family is still searching for him, with a recent social media post by a family member dated March 16.

A fourth and more recent case involves 25-year-old Malik Polk out of Coweta County, Georgia, in metro Atlanta. He was last heard from on May 17, and his family filed a missing persons report on May 19.  Authorities found his vehicle abandoned.

Damon K. Jones, a 33-year law enforcement veteran, community advocate and publisher of Black Westchester Magazine, cited the first 48 hours as a critical window in missing persons cases.

“That’s a proven investigative timeframe with any crime. My wife is a detective … and she deals with a lot of the youth, missing youth in Mount Vernon, New York.  So, you have that time that you want to get them as fast as possible,” he said to The Final Call.

“A mother knows when her child is not doing what they’re supposed to do, and a mother knows if the actions of a child, if a child is not home at a certain time, something’s wrong. What does the law tell them? They got to wait 24 hours,” he added. “So, now, when you’ve got the 48-hour window of investigation, you’re already behind 24 hours.”

Dr. Michelle Jeanis, criminology professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Dr. Bryanna Fox, former FBI agent and criminology professor at the University of South Florida, collaborated on a project to determine how social media, traditional media and law enforcement’s techniques help bring missing people home safely and sooner.

They studied how many media reports were written about each person listed in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database, how many words were written about each person and how long it took to find the person, alive or dead, or if they were found at all.

They found that women received nearly 12 times more media coverage, on average, than male victims, and White victims received nearly three times as much total media attention than non-White victims, as well as higher word counts within articles, ABC News reported.

In Malik Polk’s case, the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office posted about his missing status on social media on May 22, three days after the missing person’s report was filed. A review of online news coverage found five stories about Mr. Polk’s disappearance, though four were not published until May 27 or later, roughly one week after he was reported missing.

What happened to Derek Samuel?

Questions surrounding media attention and law enforcement response also persist in cases where missing Black men are later found dead.

Two missing Black men were found dead and received limited follow-up media coverage—Tremaine Moore, 41, whose body was found in the Savannah River on Nov. 20, 2025, one week after he was last seen;

And Kenny Darnell Jackson, 21, from Acworth, Georgia, who was last seen on Nov. 19, reported missing on Nov. 21 and whose remains were found in a wooded nature area and later identified in December.

Then, there’s the case of Derek Samuel.

The Target he was seen leaving is in Camp Creek Marketplace, off Commerce Drive in East Point, in metro Atlanta. According to his mother, surveillance video showed him walking out of Target and heading down the sidewalk toward Commerce Drive, 11Alive reported. Going north, Commerce Drive quickly turns into Redwine Road, where his phone had last pinged.

“He walked through, came out of Target, walked down the sidewalk and down towards Commerce Road and that was it,” his mother, Nishae Samuel, said to 11Alive.

Human remains were found on May 31 behind the Reserve at Redwine apartment complex on Redwine Road, after a month of searching for Mr. Samuel. The apartment complex is about half a mile away from Target.

East Point Police Chief Shawn Buchanan said during a June 3 news conference that Mr. Samuel walked into the gated apartment complex behind a vehicle. “The cellphone records showed triangulation in the woods behind the apartment complex,” the police chief said. 

Police searched the woods on May 16 but did not find anything. They returned to the woods on May 31 and found human remains after three hours of searching. They found additional human remains on June 1, along with Mr. Samuel’s cellphone, a handgun and a shell casing. Police strongly believed the remains were Mr. Samuel’s, but had not yet identified the young man.

“Based on facts of the case, at this point, we do not suspect any foul play,” Police Chief Buchanan said.

There were several delays in the search for Mr. Samuel, as reporters noted at the news conference. The family filed the missing person’s report on April 30, but police did not issue an alert about Mr. Samuel until May 11. The first search in the wooded area where the cellphone pinged was conducted on May 16, more than two weeks after Mr. Samuel’s disappearance. 

The reporters questioned: Why did it take nearly two weeks to issue a public alert, and why was the area where his phone last pinged not searched immediately? Reporters also brought up the family’s disbelief that Mr. Samuel would have harmed himself.

East Point Detective Lieutenant Rick Michaud and the police chief responded that police had to wait until the weather was conducive to do the search, that it was very difficult to locate Mr. Samuel due to the area being heavily dense with vegetation, that there was a delay after issuing a search warrant for the cellphone and that police received a lot of erroneous tips and information.

Police Chief Buchanan said they could not release any further information and did not disclose whether Mr. Samuel was shot. He said police had not ruled out suicide. 

While Mr. Samuel’s case has received far more news coverage than the other Black men mentioned, aside from widespread social media coverage, his story has mostly circulated among local news outlets based in Atlanta. Advocacy groups like the Black and Missing Foundation argue that delays in media coverage can limit public awareness and slow search efforts. 

Black people make up about one-third of metro Atlanta. Atlanta and many of the surrounding cities and counties are run by Black mayors and Black city councils. When it comes to the issue of missing Black people, Mr. Jones believes Black elected officials could and must also do more.

“The justice system still does not see value in Black life. We have yet to force it, even in communities that are run by Black faces,” he said in part. 

More than a month after Derek Samuel disappeared, his family was still searching for answers. The families of Christopher McKoy and Timothy McSears have been searching for more than a year. When someone’s son, brother or father disappears with little attention from law enforcement, what can be done?

Mr. Jones urged Black families with missing loved ones to organize and speak out under a collective voice. “Families need to be voices.  In the Atlanta area, they need to come together as a voice and as a voting bloc,” he said.  Politicians understand votes, he argued. 

“They don’t understand pain. They don’t understand when a family is grieving. They don’t understand that. They only understand it when it affects their vote, and we have to start having that conversation, because too many families are hurting out here.”