DINWIDDIE COUNTY, Va. -- The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported Friday that a Dinwiddie High School student's cause of death was asphyxia and the manner was homicide.
Ke'Asia Adkins, 17, was found dead in the woods behind her home on Sentry Hill Court on Thursday morning, according to the Dinwiddie County Sheriff's Office.
Anton Deonte Coleman, 21 of Dinwiddie County, was charged with her abduction.
Adkins was reported missing by her family when she didn't show up for cheer practice on Monday afternoon.
"We were hoping for the best. We were hoping she would come home, but we also knew in the back of our minds it was unlikely," Adkins' sister Kendra Green said. "We knew something bad had to happen in order for her not to come home or not to call."
Anton Deonte Coleman
Green said the suspect and Adkins were cousins.
Coleman had recently been away in Georgia playing college football on scholarship, according to his family.
Making rounds on social media were Instagram videos that family said Coleman uploaded of himself the day Adkins went missing. Family members said those videos appear to show him in the vicinity where Adkins was found.
Ke'Asia Adkins
Green stated she didn't know why Coleman may want to harm her sister.
"That’s not the person we grew up with -- last year he was not like that," Green stated. "The videos are hard to watch because that’s not the person we grew up with. That’s not the person we know."
Adkins was excited to join the varsity cheer team and get her driver's license. Those who knew her best described her as someone who loved life.
"She was fun loving, always smiling," Green described. "She was a cheer leader, a dancer, soccer player, and ballet dancer."
The teenager worked for Burger King on Boydton Plank Road for about a year, according to general manager Amanda Berry.
“She was very willing to work whenever you needed her,” Berry said. “She was very sweet and always willing to help.”
Adkins' family said they held no animosity toward the suspect.
"He’s already been forgiven, by everyone. My mother, her father- everything is forgiven," Green said.
Details surrounding Adkins' death have not been released at this time, but investigators said Thursday the case was being handled as a suspicious death investigation.
Coleman is being held without bond at Meherrin River Regional Jail. He will be arraigned in court on July 2, 2018.
If anyone has any information on this case, they are asked to contact Dinwiddie County Sheriff’s Office at 804-469-3755 or Petersburg/Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at 804-861-1212.
