A teen who got out of a Missouri youth detention center where he was being held on a murder charge is now being charged with murder and other crimes in the shooting death of a man who was FaceTiming with his mother.
It is being said that Jonathon Xavier Jones, 19, killed Jadun M. Byrd, 19. He is being charged with murder, armed criminal action, and unlawful use of a weapon. The shot that killed someone happened when Jones was 17. Police say he has been permitted to be tried as an adult. Jones was already in jail on separate charges, and officials say he is still there.
An official report says the killing took place on March 2, 2022, in the 2400 block of Whittier Street in St. Louis.
There was a shot, and the police were called. When the cops got there, they saw the victim lying in a parking lot with gunshot wounds. He passed away in a hospital.
Police were told that a white Dodge Journey was seen driving around the area and then parking in a nearby yard as the victim walked into the parking lot. The witness told police that someone in the driver’s side of the Journey rolled down the window and started shooting at the victim as the Journey drove toward them, the paper said.
Leslie Byrd, the victim’s mother, told police that she heard shots fired while FaceTiming with her son at the time of the murder.
The probable cause statement said, “She saw her son fall and could only see his face.”
Leslie Byrd told KSDK, an NBC station in St. Louis, that her son was in a parking lot that morning on his way to see her at work.
Someone told her, “They just shot that boy up.” “Then someone kicked the phone by accident, and I saw his head roll and his hands curl up.”
She also said, “They didn’t even rob him.” “Those people took nothing from him.” They just pulled up, shot, and drove off.
The probable cause statement says that detectives quickly connected the suspect to the murder after seeing a video of the Journey following the victim around the area where he lived.
Jones was later identified as the guy who was seen getting into the car and driving off about 30 minutes before the murder. It also showed him coming back with the car 30 minutes after the murder and getting out on the driver’s side. Police said they found the suspect’s prints on the driver’s side of the Journey when they found it.
It said that a check of the suspect’s home found several guns, including one that matched ballistic evidence found at the murder scene.
Authorities said Jones’ phone had been put into “Airplane Mode” not long before the murder and taken out of “Airplane Mode” not long after the murder.
Following his escape from a juvenile detention center, Jones was on the run at the time of the crime. He was being held on a charge of homicide in a different case that is still being investigated, according to the probable cause statement.
Police say Jones and two other people killed a 29-year-old man in September 2021. The next month, he and another teen got out of a youth detention center. Officials say that the trials for the murder in 2021 and the flight case are still to come.