Police renew search for missing Pāhoa veteran Kelly Gravitt

Nearly three years after Kelly Gravitt vanished in Pāhoa, Hawaii Island police have again gone public with the case, issuing Update #10 and asking residents to help fill in the gaps around the combat-wounded Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient’s final known movements.

Police said Gravitt was last seen in mid-May 2023, but the exact timeline has varied across releases. Earlier Hawaii Police Department updates said he was reportedly seen on the evening of May 19, 2023, in the area of Pāhoa Village Road and Kauhale Street in Pāhoa town. Other reporting placed an early sighting at Black Lava Vape in the Puna Kai Shopping Center on Pāhoa Village Road. However the timeline is read, investigators have kept the disappearance anchored in the same stretch of lower Puna, where a short walk, a roadside stop or a familiar face can matter years later.

Detectives said they have conducted countless interviews and follow-ups as part of the investigation, but the case has not closed. The department has renewed public appeals repeatedly since at least May 2024, with later reminders in November 2024, May 2025, December 2025 and again in May 2026. That persistence underscores how long missing-person cases on Hawaii Island can remain active even when few new facts surface, especially when memories fade, people move away and small details are left unreported until much later.

Gravitt was described in earlier police releases as a Caucasian man, 6 feet tall and about 180 pounds, with brown hair, blue eyes, a thick auburn beard, tattoos on his face and neck, and scars on his lower legs from prior injuries. Police also identified him as a combat-wounded veteran. Family members, police said, remain deeply concerned for his well-being and desperate for answers.

Investigators have also pointed the public toward the places Gravitt was known to frequent: Kalapana, the Sea View lawn, Kahena Beach and the Uncle Roberts area. Those locations give the community concrete places to check against memory, photographs and old phone records. A sighting that seemed ordinary in 2023 may now be the detail that moves the case forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Sybastian Keltner of the Area I Criminal Investigation Section Unsolved Homicides and Missing Persons Unit, the Hawaii Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation Honolulu Field Office or Crime Stoppers. An earlier police release listed the report number as 23-049866.