San Diego police suspect the body of missing 2-year-old Jahi Turner may be somewhere in the Otay landfill and officials are contemplating a massive search through thousands of tons of trash and sludge to find it.
It would be the second search of a landfill in the two-month investigation. More than 100 officers combed through 5,000 tons of trash at the Miramar landfill in May.
San Diego homicide Capt. Mike McCulloch said there is "a strong possibility" Jahi's body is at the Otay site. He and others declined to say why detectives and prosecutors think so. But county law enforcement sources said common sense is leading police in that direction.
Trash collected from the Golden Hill neighborhood where Jahi lived with his mother and stepfather, Tameka and Tieray Jones, was taken to both the Miramar and Otay landfills. If Jahi was killed – and police believe he was – it would not be out of the question for the killer to have discarded the body in a nearby trash bin.
Neither Tameka nor Tieray Jones could be reached for comment yesterday.
The boy's stepfather told police Jahi vanished from a small Balboa Park playground at 28th and Cedar streets around 2:30 p.m. April 25. Jones said he left the child to get a soda, and when he returned Jahi was gone.
Police don't believe the story. Sources said they have no evidence Jahi was at the park that day.
Jones later told reporters he left the boy alone for three or four minutes and that a woman with other toddlers was at the playground at the time.
"He was in the park playing with two children," he said. "I didn't see any harm."
Police have said Jones told them Jahi was left alone for 15 minutes. They have been unable to find the woman Jones said he saw in the park.
Tameka Jones, an 18-year-old Navy seaman, was aboard the amphibious transport Rushmore when her son was reported missing.
"Worst-case scenario we're looking for a body, but also clothing or any other evidence that would link a potential suspect to the crime," McCulloch said, noting that police will decide "soon" whether to search the landfill.
Police officials met Tuesday with the general manager of the city's landfills to determine whether a search would be worthwhile.
Homicide detectives and prosecutors are calculating the cost of the Miramar search in an effort to predict the cost of an Otay search. They are weighing the potential hazards to searchers and trying to determine who would do the search – police, volunteers or a private firm under contract.
But most of all they are evaluating the chances of finding the body.
"Even if cost was no consideration, how much evidentiary value would it have?" McCulloch said. "This is more problematic than the other landfill."
The search at the Miramar landfill, which ended May 6, was a much easier proposition because the site does not have sludge.
The Otay landfill collects about 4,000 tons of solid waste and 400 tons of sludge daily, said Neil Mohr, general manager of the city's landfills. Authorities can specify the general area where trash from a particular neighborhood is taken, but the trash has been crushed by bulldozers and compactors.
"We know where it is, but it is almost an acre," Mohr said. "Five thousand tons of waste is a lot of waste. I don't know exactly what they're looking for, but finding something you're looking for, no matter what it is, will be difficult."
At the request of police, the area where trash from the boy's Golden Hill neighborhood is routinely dumped has been off limits to further dumping since early in the investigation, McCulloch said.
Police said they are confident the case will be solved, with or without a body.
"Before we submit our case to the DA, we have to exhaust every investigative lead," McCulloch said. "That's what we're looking at now."
McCulloch declined to discuss the investigation further.
"We're looking at everyone as a possible suspect," he said. "We are collecting all our information and facts, interviewing witnesses. We have several large notebooks filled with information from witnesses that we have to go through and analyze before we draw any conclusions on who's our primary suspect. If one person surfaces as a result of that, we will go ahead and submit that to the DA's office."
Jahi Turner