Posted on 05/02/2002 9:45:25 AM PDT by brneyedgirl
San Diego police have concluded that 2-year-old Jahi Turner and his stepfather did not visit a Balboa Park playground the day the stepfather reported the child missing.
Police have discounted the story of the stepfather, Tieray Jones, because of inconsistencies in his account of what happened and because results of a lie-detector test indicated deception by Jones, said county law enforcement sources familiar with the case.
Jones, 23, told police he left Jahi in the play area at 28th and Cedar streets last Thursday while he walked to a soda machine 100 yards away, then returned 15 minutes later to find the toddler gone. Police classified the case as an abduction.
However, evidence technicians found no fingerprints from Jahi on the playground equipment, such as swings or the slide, indicating the boy likely had not played there recently, sources said. Criminalists lifted Jahi's fingerprints from inside the family's Golden Hill apartment for comparison, the sources said.
Jones was questioned extensively yesterday by homicide detectives, who for the first time confronted him about inconsistencies in his story, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because details of the case are confidential.
The sources stopped short yesterday of saying Jones is a suspect, and declined to indicate whether they believe Jahi is dead. However, police continued to sift through tons of garbage at the Miramar landfill. Trash collected from the Joneses' apartment complex and from the playground is taken to that dump site.
The child's mother, Tameka Jones, an 18-year-old Navy seaman assigned to the amphibious ship Rushmore, was aboard the ship when the child went missing.
Although police have said little officially about the investigation, department spokesman Dave Cohen confirmed yesterday that detectives have found nothing or no one to confirm Tieray Jones' account of how and when the boy disappeared. He said police are still searching for a woman Jones described as being at the park with two children last Thursday.
Police thought they had found and talked to the witness, whose composite sketch is being circulated by hundreds of volunteer searchers. But the woman interviewed this week turned out to have been in another area of Balboa Park, Cohen said.
Yesterday, dozens of detectives in protective gear continued searching debris from a specific section of the massive Miramar landfill. Police will not say what they're looking for, but landfill officials said the detectives are focusing on trash collected on one day last week, from neighborhoods that include South Park and Golden Hill.
Trash is picked up on Wednesdays in that area. Jahi's stepfather reported him missing last Thursday.
At the landfill, bulldozers carry loads of trash to a wide area, where it is spread out. Detectives work in a penetrating stench day and night, sifting the ankle-deep garbage with rakes and shovels. A search of this magnitude is believed to be unprecedented.
Some 100 Marines were expected to be brought in at 7 a.m. today to assist in the landfill search, which Cohen said is likely to go on for several days.
"I can't tell you specifics, but there is a particular area of the dump we want to focus on," Cohen told reporters in a late-afternoon briefing at the landfill. "We will continue to be here 24 hours a day as long as it takes to get through the area we want to.
"We're looking for any clue as to what happened to Jahi," he added. "We have to be out here in a certain time frame to do it, or it gets much more difficult to do."
About 5,000 tons of trash is collected and dumped in one day, landfill officials said.
In another development, a retired Navy master chief from Rancho Bernardo offered a $10,000 reward "for the safe return of Jahi Turner to his family."
The 48-year-old donor, David Curry, said he is not a deep-pocket philanthropist but was moved by the family's ordeal.
"Being a father and being in the Navy, I could not even imagine what it would be like to lose a kid that way," he said.
Ping. Well, this really isn't a surprise. Poor kid.
Of course, as soon as this story was posted most of us realized this PoS was lying and probably killed the little guy.
And what about the mother? I wonder what her interest is in all of this. Maybe she wanted the little boy out of the picture so that she could have her new lover all to herself and not be burdened by the child. I'd like to see her under the lie detector.
Obviously the police realize this is highly likely pointing directly at the step-father, (or mother). They seem to be looking pretty hard at the land fill.
Happens with tigers and cheetahs all the time. Some kind of ethnobiological thing.
Yes, that's entirely possible, but I still think it's highly unlikely. Usually it's the simple theory that turns out to be the right one. I'm still going for my Theory #1, the spur of the moment fit of rage resulting in the baby's death and the panicked and hastily contrived coverup story.
Second Child Abduction Haunts San Diego Brenda and Damon van Dam create Web site, offer advice!
I don't want to believe this, but it can't be discounted that the Mother knew her new husband didn't want to care for the child while she was onboard the ship, so they cooked it up together.
Remember that Susan Smith was dating a guy who didn't "want" her children. That's why she drowned them...even tho it wasn't a conpiracy.
They both need to be looked at.
sw
I'd like to see it stretched to 5 to 10 for child abandonment/endangerment and that pathetic cookie-boy husband of her's too.
Huh?...What the heck is that about?...Marines?
FMCDH!
Really!?!? Well, blow me down!
5/2/02
MIRAMAR ---- Nearly 80 San Diego police detectives continued to painstakingly comb through heaps of garbage at a city landfill Wednesday in search for clues to the disappearance of a San Diego toddler.
"We don't have (many) clues or information in this case," said Dave Cohen, a spokesman for the San Diego Police Department, during a late afternoon press conference. "Nothing has been found so far."
Don Boomer/Staff Photographer |
San Diego police and Miramar Landfill workers search through trash looking for clues in the disappearance of 2-year-old Jahi Turner. |
Two-year-old Jahi Turner, who lives in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego, was last seen by his stepfather, Tieray Jones, 23, at a Balboa Park playground. Police believe the toddler was kidnapped.
Jones told police that he had left Jahi alone for 15 minutes to purchase a soda from a vending machine several hundred yards away. An unknown woman with two other youngsters also was at the playground. When Jones returned, his stepson and everyone else was gone.
Cohen said there are no suspects in the case, but he said police are seeking the woman for questioning. Investigators had questioned another woman earlier, but it was later determined that she was not the person Jones had seen.
"We just want to tell ... the person who has our son that you can just drop him off at a safe place so that someone who is caring can bring him home to us," the boy's mother, 18-year-old Tameka Jones, said in a Tuesday press conference. "We don't care who the (abductor) is just ---- we just want him back."
Meanwhile, detectives have been sifting through mounds of rubbish continuously at the Miramar Landfill since Tuesday morning. Cohen said that detectives could spend days scouring the trash since only 20 percent of the garbage set aside for inspection has been searched.
Cohen declined to say what promoted police to comb the landfill, adding that it was not the result of a tip. One hundred Marines are expected to join the search today.
Meanwhile, hundreds of volunteer searchers have been scouring canyons and residential neighborhoods near the playground since Saturday.
A recent arrival
Jahi had moved to San Diego from Frederick, Md., five days before his disappearance to live with his mother and his stepfather.
The family lives in a housing complex on Beech Street, which rents to naval and Marine families.
Tameka Jones, a Navy sailor, was on duty abroad the USS Rushmore off the coast of San Diego the day Jahi vanished.
During the press conference, the couple pleaded for the public's help to find their son. The two have been assisted by Brenda and Damon van Dam. The van Dams' 7-year-old daughter, Danielle, was kidnapped and killed in February.
Danielle's alleged abductor, David Westerfield, 50, is awaiting trial for her murder.
Looking through rubbish
Working inside a trash pit at the 140-acre landfill, detectives, clad in protective suits, raked through tons of garbage. Home Depot has donated 100 rakes and 100 pairs of gloves for the effort.
Investigators wore surgical masks to abate the reeking air as tractors and other large earth-movers continuously unearthed trash buried in mounds of dirt and rocks.
Nicole Hall, a spokeswoman for the city's Environmental Services Department, which operates the landfill, said the trash pits or cells are filled with 5,000 tons of trash from neighborhoods throughout San Diego daily.
"It's very unusual to do this," she said of the search. "It's really finding a needle in a haystack."
A body was found at a city landfill more than 20 years ago, according an official with the Environmental Services Department, who did not wish to be identified.
Although it was not a homicide case, searchers took nine days to find the body of the independent trash hauler at the Chollas Landfill, the official said.
Volunteers organize searches
More than 100 volunteers are searching for Jahi. They have created the Jahi Search Center at a Moose lodge at 1648 30th St.
Fliers have been posted in the neighborhood, and a Web site for Jahi has been created.
"It's a community coming together and saying we have had enough," said Bill Garcia, a private investigator who is coordinating the search efforts.
The effort comes two months after Danielle van Dam's nude body was found by volunteer searchers in Dehesa.
In an all too familiar sight, Jahi search teams have donned fluorescent vests and traversed target areas seeking clues. The dawn-to-dusk searches are a daily operation.
Garcia said he believes Jahi is still alive because, unlike the Danielle case, there are little clues and no suspects.
"He is probably being held up by someone," Garcia said.
This weekend, he said, up to 500 volunteers are expected to give up their free time to find Jahi.
The toddler is described as being a light-skinned African-American who is about 30 inches tall and weighs about 30 pounds. He was last seen wearing a blue "Winnie the Pooh" shirt, blue nylon cargo pants and a pair of gray Michael Jordan tennis shoes.
To volunteer, call the search center at (619) 255-6411. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call police at (619) 531-2000 or Crime Stoppers at (619) 235-8477.
City News Service and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Kenneth Ma at (760) 740-3524 or kma@nctimes.com.
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