Texas Faith Christian Center Senior pastor Philip Loveday who went missing on August 2 after leaving home for his job at Kinder Morgan has been found dead in a Kinder Morgan truck.
5 days after Texas Corpus Christi Police Department issued a public statement requesting the assistance of the public in finding the missing pastor, they announced in a Tuesday Facebook statement that Loveday’s company vehicle was found on county road 2444 in Nueces County on Tuesday at approximately 2:55 p.m. They noted also that it was found by officers from the Kleberg County Sheriff’s Office.
The police went on to announce in the statement that “A body was located inside of the vehicle. At this time we are waiting on the findings from the medical examiner’s office to complete their investigation. This is still an active investigation.”
A few hours following the release of the statement, Finding Philip Loveday, a Facebook page created by Faith Christian Center which seeks to entice volunteers to assist in locating their pastor, made known their plan to issue a statement concerning the pastor.
“We will be updating shortly, please give us time to be with the family,” the statement read.
Kleberg County deputy David Farias disclosed to the 3 News that Loveday’s company Truck was found after a search of the brushy area near the South Texas Botanical Gardens. He confirmed that the body seems to have been long dead from a gunshot wound before he was discovered.
“We had some basic discussions on looking for him and what we could do starting from home. I left today headed to work and the first thing I did was check the creek area, Oso Creek,” Farias said.” I was gonna go on to County Road 43 and before I got there, I noticed the barn and it’s all grown over, there’s a lot of brush there so I said, let me take this off my list and clear it, I drove up halfway up the driveway and saw there was a vehicle and with the binoculars, I was able to confirm it was Mr. Loveday’s truck.”
At the time, Farias said he called the Corpus Christi police department and other law enforcement officials who confirmed that the body inside the truck was Loveday.
“Deputies responded to the scene, CCPD, Nueces County, Texas Rangers all responded, found a deceased male in the vehicle, we have determined the deceased male is Mr. Phillip Loveday,” Chief Deputy David Cook with the Nueces County Sheriff’s Office said.