Armed Teen Manhunt Grips Florida

The gap between “police have identified a suspect” and “the public has seen the evidence” is where nearly every high-profile homicide case lives for weeks or months — and the DeLand double murder investigation is a textbook illustration of that gap, not an exception to it.

Key Points

DeLand Police obtained an arrest warrant for Keyan Jayden Rundell, 17, on two counts of second-degree murder in the July 29 killings of Dustin Rose, 19, and Samson Campbell, 18.
Rose was a Citadel cadet from the class of 2029; the two victims were described as childhood friends found shot to death at an industrial park on West New York Avenue.
Authorities have labeled Rundell “armed and dangerous” and are directing the public to call 911 rather than approach him.
The underlying probable-cause affidavit and forensic basis for the warrant have not been made public — a routine feature of active homicide investigations, not evidence of a weak case.
Rundell’s status as a minor will shape how much of the investigative record the public ever sees, even after an arrest.

What Investigators Have Said, and What They Have Not

DeLand Police announced in a press release that they had obtained an arrest warrant for Keyan Jayden Rundell in connection with the July 29 double homicide, naming him as wanted on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Dustin Rose and Samson Campbell. That is a formal legal step, not a casual accusation: an arrest warrant for a named individual requires a judge or magistrate to find probable cause, typically built from a sworn affidavit that lays out witness statements, physical evidence, or investigative findings connecting that person to the crime. Florida’s second-degree murder statute applies to killings committed with a depraved mind, without premeditation — a legal distinction from first-degree murder that will matter considerably if and when this case reaches a courtroom.

What the public record does not yet contain is that affidavit itself. Coverage from multiple outlets confirms the warrant and the murder counts, and confirms that police consider Rundell armed and dangerous, but none has published the specific factual basis — no ballistics match, no witness account, no digital evidence — that a judge relied on to sign off. That silence is standard practice in active investigations, where releasing evidentiary detail can tip off a fleeing suspect, compromise a pending search, or taint a jury pool months before trial. It is not, by itself, a reason to doubt the warrant; it is simply the normal information lag that separates a police announcement from a public trial record.

The Victims and the Setting

Dustin Rose, 19, and Samson Campbell, 18, were described by investigators and by Rose’s own family and school as childhood friends. Rose was a cadet at The Citadel, the South Carolina military college, entering with the class of 2029; the school’s president issued a statement mourning “a passing member of class of 2029, Cadet Dustin Rose,” describing him as someone preparing to return to campus as a team leader. The two were found shot to death at an industrial park at 213 West New York Avenue in DeLand on the night of July 29 — a discovery that, per local reporting, set off an immediate homicide investigation and, roughly a week later, the identification of Rundell as the suspect police were seeking.

That timeline — a killing, a week of investigation, then a named suspect and warrant rather than an immediate arrest — is common in cases where the person police believe is responsible has not been located. It typically means detectives built their case first, through forensics, digital records, or witness interviews, and sought the warrant once they had enough to present to a judge, even though the suspect himself remains at large.

Why “Armed and Dangerous” Changes the Public’s Role

Police descriptions of Rundell include his approximate height, weight, hair and eye color, and an explicit warning that he should be considered armed and dangerous, with instructions for the public to call 911 rather than attempt any contact. That designation is not decorative language. It is a formal risk classification that shapes how officers who encounter the suspect are trained to respond, and it signals to the public that this is an active manhunt rather than a case where the subject is expected to surrender peacefully. A reward for information leading to arrest typically accompanies this stage of an investigation, and it did here, reflecting how much law enforcement now depends on tips and public visibility once a suspect has evaded initial apprehension.

This is also the phase of a case most vulnerable to distortion. Early reporting on fast-moving stories frequently contains name misspellings and garbled details — one broadcast account rendered the suspect’s name as “Keon Randelle” rather than the DeLand Police Department’s own spelling, Keyan Jayden Rundell — and those inconsistencies, however minor, illustrate how quickly a chaotic breaking-news cycle can blur the very details the public is being asked to help verify. None of that discrepancy touches the substance of the accusation; it is a caution about sourcing hygiene, not a challenge to the warrant itself.

What Juvenile Status Means for What Happens Next

Rundell is 17, and that fact alone will govern much of what the public is permitted to see even after any arrest. Juvenile proceedings in most states, Florida included, carry statutory protections that can seal records, restrict media access to hearings, and limit the release of investigative material that would otherwise become public in an adult case. Whether Rundell is ultimately charged and tried as a juvenile or, given the severity of the alleged offense, referred for adult prosecution — a decision prosecutors in cases involving minors accused of homicide frequently pursue — will determine how transparent the remainder of this case becomes. Comparable cases, such as the double-homicide prosecution of a then-15-year-old Rainier Beach, Washington suspect who evaded capture for nearly two months before being charged as an adult, show that violent-crime allegations against minors do not automatically stay confined to juvenile court, nor does public scrutiny simply evaporate because the accused is underage.

The broader pattern here is one any close observer of homicide reporting recognizes: a suspect is named, a warning is issued, the public is enlisted, and the fuller evidentiary picture — forensic results, motive, the sequence of events inside that industrial park — emerges later, through arraignment, discovery, and eventually trial. The high-profile 2022 University of Idaho student killings followed the same arc, with nearly seven weeks separating the murders from any named suspect and considerably longer before probable-cause detail became public. Judged against that pattern, the DeLand case is proceeding exactly as these investigations typically do: an accusation grounded in a judicially reviewed warrant, evidence still under wraps, and a manhunt that will only be resolved — for the public and, more importantly, for the victims’ families — once Rundell is located and the case moves into open court.

BREAKING: Police have publicly identified Keyan Rundell as a suspect in the DeLand double homicide involving Dustin “DJ” Rose, 19, and Samson Campbell, 18.#DeLand #BreakingNews #VolusiaCounty #Homicide pic.twitter.com/NrOsqDn6JL

— AM7NEWS (@OfficialAM7News) August 4, 2026

The Caveat Worth Keeping in Mind

An arrest warrant is an accusation validated by a judicial officer, not a conviction, and Rundell remains legally presumed innocent unless and until a court finds otherwise. That standard caveat does not diminish the seriousness of what police have alleged; it simply marks where the process currently stands.