Jury deadlocks over whether stepfather killed 2-year-old Jahi Turner

Reporting from San Diego — The question of what happened to Jahi Turner, a toddler who disappeared from San Diego in 2002, remains unresolved after a jury on Friday declared they were unable to reach a verdict.

The nine men and four women had spent the week trying to determine whether the boy’s stepfather, Tieray Jones, had killed him. San Diego Superior Court Judge Joan Weber declared a mistrial when the jurors said they would not be able to agree unanimously to convict or acquit Jones.

They revealed in court that after two days of deliberations, they were divided 10-2 in favor of finding Jones not guilty on a charge of murder. They also could not agree on a lesser charge of manslaughter, splitting 10-2 in favor of acquittal.

Although the 2-year-old’s body was never found despite massive search efforts, prosecutors built a circumstantial case against Jones, now 39.

Investigators found a small amount of Jahi’s blood on his pajamas and on a blanket. They also found neighbors who saw Jones take large trash bags to a dumpster at his Beech Street apartment complex around the time Jahi disappeared.

Jones testified that Jahi vanished when he took the boy to a Golden Hill neighborhood playground and walked away for about 15 minutes on April 25, 2002.

Jones said when he called 911 about 2:30 p.m. to report the boy missing, he had been lying to a dispatcher because Jahi’s disappearance actually had occurred about three hours earlier. Jones said he lied because he was ashamed of having failed the child, and because he didn’t want contact with police, who might arrest him for a Maryland misdemeanor marijuana warrant.

When San Diego police talked to people who had been at the park around the time of the 911 call, no one recalled seeing Jones and Jahi.

The boy’s mother and Jones’ then-wife, Tameka Jones, was a Navy seaman on a week-long deployment at the time Jahi vanished.

The investigation stalled for years with no charges filed, but Tieray Jones was arrested in 2016.

Prosecutors alleged that he may have become irate over Jahi wetting their shared bed and over not being able to access funds on his wife’s Navy bank account.

pauline.repard@sduniontribune

Repard writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune