The police in Columbia, S.C., arrested a man on Saturday in connection with the killing of a 21-year-old college student who was last seen early Friday before she apparently got into a car that she mistook for an Uber she had called, the authorities said.

The police said at a news conference on Saturday night that the body of the woman, Samantha Josephson, was found Friday in a wooded area in Clarendon County. They said they believed that the man they had taken into custody, Nathaniel D. Rowland, 24, had recently lived nearby.

Mr. Rowland faced murder and kidnapping charges. He was arrested early Saturday when the police found him driving a car that resembled the one Ms. Josephson had entered, said William H. Holbrook, the chief of the Columbia Police Department. The police did not say whether there was any known connection between Ms. Josephson and Mr. Rowland.

The police did not share a possible motive for the killing, but Chief Holbrook asked the public to report any recent experiences of someone trying to “entice” them into a rideshare vehicle in the Five Points neighborhood, where Ms. Josephson was last seen at 2 a.m. on Friday getting into a black Chevrolet Impala.