Jordan Scales’ family says the 29-year-old should be remembered as a father, brother and fisherman, not reduced to a brief police label as detectives search for leads.
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — Boynton Beach police are investigating the killing of Jordan Scales, a 29-year-old Ohio man and father whose body was found Sunday morning in a wooded area near South Federal Highway, with detectives saying no arrest had been announced by Wednesday.
The case has drawn attention because it remains thin on public facts even as grief from Scales’ family has filled in much of the human story. Police have said Scales was found dead April 19 and that they believe he was killed sometime between April 16 and April 19. Beyond that, investigators have not publicly described how he died, whether they have identified a suspect or what evidence first led them to classify the death as a homicide. At the same time, relatives have spoken publicly to challenge how the first official description of Scales framed his life.
Police said officers were called around 7 a.m. Sunday after a report of a dead body in a wooded area near the 1900 block of South Federal Highway, close to Harvey E. Oyer Jr. Park. When officers arrived, they found Scales dead in the brush and later opened a homicide investigation. Detectives said they believe the killing happened sometime between Thursday, April 16, and Sunday, April 19, giving the public a three-day window but little else. No arrest affidavit had been filed by Wednesday, and no court record had surfaced showing charges against any suspect. The department asked anyone with information to contact Detective Leitner, but it did not say whether investigators were tracking a vehicle, reviewing surveillance video or following up on witness accounts from nearby businesses, roads or park areas. That left the first stage of the case defined by a short official timeline: a body found at daybreak, a probable window of death stretching back several days and a homicide inquiry still largely out of public view.
The limited public record quickly collided with the family’s effort to describe Scales in fuller terms. In early police wording repeated in local reporting, Scales was described as a local transient or as someone temporarily living in the area. His sister, Hilary Lee, told local television that label did not come close to the person her family knew. She said Scales was “one of a kind” and brought an energy people remembered wherever he went. David Scales II, his brother, said Jordan was “a brother, son, a father” and “an amazing fisherman.” Family members said he grew up in Ohio and spent much of his childhood around bass fishing because their father competed in semi-pro tournaments. They said Jordan later won a local bass fishing tournament at Indian Lake, Ohio, a detail they have returned to as proof that his talent and identity were larger than the circumstances of his death. Their comments shifted the story from a bare homicide notice into a dispute over language, dignity and whether a person’s hardest years should define the public memory that follows a violent death.
Relatives did not try to erase Scales’ struggles. Instead, they talked about them directly. Lee said her brother moved through several states, including Tennessee and Kentucky, before going to South Florida about two years ago. She described him as a free spirit who was often hard to pin down, someone who loved water, boats and the outdoors and who looked for peace outside. She also said he had faced addiction and earlier run-ins with the law, and that those problems put strain on family relationships at times. But Lee said that did not change the bond between them or the fact that he was trying to steady his life. She said Scales had told relatives that if sleeping outdoors and staying away from certain people was what it took to keep moving in a better direction, then that was what he would do. “He was trying every day to be better,” Lee said in one interview. That account has not answered how he died, but it has given the public a clearer sense of why his family reacted so sharply to short, clinical descriptions that suggested only instability and not effort, history or love.
The setting adds another layer to the case. The body was found near South Federal Highway in Boynton Beach, not in an isolated rural area but in a corridor where roads, businesses and public spaces meet. That does not mean the killing happened exactly where Scales was discovered, and police have not said whether they believe the body was left there after he died somewhere else. They also have not said whether there were visible signs of trauma, whether a weapon was recovered or whether digital records such as phone data have helped narrow his last known movements. In most homicide investigations, those are the kinds of details that emerge only after detectives work through witness interviews, medical examiner findings and forensic testing. For now, the public record remains unusually narrow. Police have identified the victim, the place where he was found and the likely time window of the killing. They have not publicly identified any persons of interest, described a motive or said whether the case appears random, personal or tied to someone Scales knew. That silence has left family members waiting for the first formal sign that the investigation is moving from evidence collection toward an arrest.
What has been public, by contrast, is the family’s grief. Lee told reporters that the call about her brother’s death came while relatives were on the way to another funeral, deepening the shock of the moment. She said people often judge those who struggle with addiction without understanding the pain or conditions that can shape those struggles. David Scales II said his brother should not be reduced to a single police label or a headline about where he was found. Another relative said simply, “He had a family that loved him.” That sentence has become the clearest summary of how the family wants the story told. Scales was the youngest of three siblings, relatives said, and the father of a young daughter. He was also an uncle, a son and a man who, by his family’s telling, could make people smile even during the hardest periods of his life. Those details do not answer the unanswered questions of the investigation, but they do explain why the case has resonated beyond one local crime report. It is now about both a killing and the terms on which a dead man is remembered.
The next steps are likely to be procedural before they become public. Detectives typically work backward from the victim’s last confirmed movements, seek out surveillance footage, examine phone and social records, wait for medical findings and compare witness accounts for gaps or conflict. None of that had yet produced a public arrest, suspect interview or announced court date by Wednesday. No prosecutor had filed charges, and police had not scheduled a news conference to explain how Scales died or whether the place where he was found was also the place where he was killed. Until one of those milestones arrives, the case remains in the quiet stage that often follows the first police alert. For Scales’ relatives, that means living with two forms of uncertainty at once: who killed him, and when the public record will finally catch up to the fuller life they say existed behind the homicide notice.
As of Wednesday, Boynton Beach police were still publicly holding to the same three-day timeline they announced after Jordan Scales’ body was found. The next clear milestone is expected to come through an arrest, a police update or medical findings that explain more precisely how he was killed.
Author note: Last updated April 22, 2026.