San Diego police will not be sifting through sludge-coated trash at Chula Vista's Otay Landfill in their efforts to solve the April disappearance of 2-year-old Jahi Turner, police Chief David Bejarano announced yesterday.
Bejarano said his decision was based on health risks to officers searching garbage mired in treated sewage sludge, combined with the low probability of making a breakthrough in the nearly three-month-old case.
"We have no specific information to lead us to believe we would find any evidence" at the landfill, he said.
However, Bejarano said he expects eventually to identify and arrest a suspect in the Golden Hill toddler's disappearance. He said the case remains a high priority, with a detective team working on it full time.
"I am confident at some point this case will be presented to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution," he told reporters, declining to elaborate.
Jahi's stepfather, Tieray Jones, reported the boy missing April 25. Jones told police he took the child to a playground at 28th and Cedar streets, left him for 15 minutes and returned to find him gone.
Law enforcement sources told the Union-Tribune that the boy's fingerprints were not found on any of the playground equipment.
Jahi was reported missing just four days after his mother and stepfather brought him to San Diego from Maryland, where he had been living with a grandmother. His mother, Tameka Jones, is an 18-year-old Navy seaman assigned to a San Diego-based ship. She was at sea for four days when Jahi was reported missing.
Police and hundreds of volunteers spent weeks searching South Park, Golden Hill and other areas for traces of the boy or witnesses who might have seen him. They turned up nothing.
Police also launched an unprecedented search at the city's Miramar Landfill, where trash from South Park and Golden Hill had been dumped. Detectives in masks and protective suits spent a week raking through 5,000 tons of garbage. Department officials would not say what they were looking for, but nothing was found.
Investigators later learned some of the trash from South Park, Golden Hill and surrounding areas could have wound up at Otay or at the city's Sycamore Canyon landfill near Santee. A search at Sycamore is not being considered, Bejarano said.
A licensed private detective who coordinated the first wave of volunteers announced Friday he was reopening his own investigation at the request of Jahi's biological father, Tramane Sampson of Maryland.
Yesterday the investigator, Bill Garcia, said he has received dozens of calls and e-mails with suggestions but has not yet found any promising clues or witnesses.
Bejarano said police hold little hope of finding Jahi alive, saying that would be "a miracle at this point."
Chet Barfield: (619) 542-4572; chet.barfield@uniontrib.com
