By Kelly Thornton and Chet Barfield
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS
May 2, 2002
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.
Lets put it together. Grandmother turns over the 2 year-old to stepfather, Mommie's at sea, boy turns up missing! Surprise!
Brenda van Dam was the first one on the scene, beating John Walsh and Klass to the punch. Walsh and Klass are breathing a sigh of relief, and Brenda's PR team must be having a fit! LOL!
But really, didn't the step-father look like an ad for Ralph Lauren? Who would have EVER suspected the guy?
Some of us did....shame on us?
sw
It's sounding like this guy got tired of watching the little tyke and just decided to get rid of him. This was my suspicion the first second I heard of the case, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Then the Van Dams joined in and I almost expect them to find Jhani's body on Dehesa Road in about 2 more weeks.