By Pauline Repard and Kevin Clerici
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

April 26, 2002

Police searched intensely last night for a 2-year-old boy who vanished from Balboa Park when his stepfather left him for a short time.

Tieray Jones, 23, told San Diego police he had taken the boy, Jahi Turner, to a playground near 28th and Cedar streets about 2:30 p.m. Jones said he walked to a nearby vending machine for a soda and returned 15 minutes later to find that the boy was gone.

Want to help? To volunteer to help search for Jani Turner, provide information to the police or to see whether Jahi has been found, call the San Diego Police Department Citizens Access Phone System at (619) 570-1070. Volunteer searchers were not being requested as of 6 p.m. Friday, but police are taking the names of potential volunteers.

A woman who Jones said had been at the playground with two other children also was gone, and, as of last evening, she had not been found, said San Diego police spokesman David Cohen.

The hunt, with dogs, helicopter, sheriff's search-and-rescue volunteers on horseback and foot, reminded neighbors of the intense efforts to find 7-year-old Danielle van Dam in February.

The girl's body was found in Dehesa three weeks after she disappeared from her parents' Sabre Springs home. A neighbor, David Westerfield, faces trial on charges of kidnapping and murder.

"It makes sense to think of it (Danielle's kidnapping)," said Carol Brown, who lives on 28th Street near the playground. "I'd never think about leaving a 2-year-old alone for a minute."

Jones told officers that he searched near the playground, at the eastern edge of Balboa Park near a golf course, for 15 minutes before calling police. Patrol officers arrived within 10 minutes and began searching restrooms, the golf course and a nearby eucalyptus grove.

Detectives began going house-to-house with a photo of the boy.

Jahi is described as a light-skinned African-American, weighing about 30 pounds, 30 inches tall, with black hair. He was wearing a blue, long-sleeved shirt with an embroidered image of Winnie the Pooh and possibly Tigger. He also wore blue nylon cargo pants with an orange drawstring at the waist and Michael Jordan sneakers.

Jahi turned 2 in February.

"Right now all we have is a missing child," Cohen said last evening as the sun set over the quiet neighborhood of large, elegant old two-story homes near the park.

"At this point, there are any number of things this could be. We have no reason to suspect the father's story."

Jahi's mother, identified by police as Tameka Jones, 18, is a Navy seaman and had been deployed on Monday for a weeklong sea cruise on the dock landing ship Rushmore. Navy officials said they put her aboard a small boat and took her to San Diego last night.

Cohen said the Joneses had taken an apartment on Beech Street, several blocks east of Balboa Park, about two weeks ago. Tameka Jones traveled to Frederick, Md., last weekend to get her son, who had been staying there with his grandmother. Mother and son returned to San Diego on Monday, before she joined her ship.

Late into the night, 53 police officers and about 60 sheriff's search-and-rescue volunteers gathered at a command post at 28th and Cedar, near the family's apartment, to plan their search patterns. They scoured nearby canyons, including ones near Grape Street Park. In the afternoon, the police helicopter had crisscrossed the area, broadcasting information about the missing boy.