Public Safety

Jahi Turner's Mother Still Wants Answers 18 Years After Her Son Went Missing

By Pat Finn / Producer , Mark Sauer / Host, The Roundtable

Published November 17, 2020 at 1:47 PM PST

This story was published more than 3 years ago.

These undated photos show Tieray Jones and Jahi Turner.

Jahi Turner’s Mother Still Wants Answers 18 Years After Her Son Went Missing

It was a case that commanded headlines for months back in 2002. Jahi Turner, 2 years old, went missing. His step-father said they were at a neighborhood park in Golden Hill, he left the child for a minute to go get him something to drink and Jahi vanished. The boy’s mother learned the news while serving on a Navy ship. The case was never solved.

In early 2002, Tameka Jones moved to San Diego with her husband and her two-year-old son, Jahi Turner. An operations specialist in the Navy, Jones was shipped out in April aboard the USS Rushmore, where she got the call that changed her life.

Her husband told her he couldn't find Jahi.

A community-wide search and hundreds of hours of police work produced no leads. The case grew cold and then colder.

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But when Jones filed for divorce from Tieray in 2012, SDPD detectives reopened the case. With Tameka Jones finally able to look at the evidence and talk to the police, there was enough to charge Tieray Jones with murder.

But it was not enough to convict him. In 2018, the jury was deadlocked, and the judge ruled that the evidence was too weak for a retrial.

Now, after 18 years, Tameka Jones is at last ready to tell her side of the story. She spoke at length to San Diego Union-Tribune editor Dana Littlefield, who talked with Midday Edition about the case and how Jones came to terms with the outcome.

Public Safety

Pat Finn

Pat Finn previously served as a producer for KPBS Midday Edition and KPBS Evening Edition. Finn began her career in broadcasting at KTLA and KCET in Los Angeles. In 1979 she became KPBS’ Public Information Director, then Director of Advertising and Promotion, Program Director, and Director of Broadcasting. She oversaw the station’s local and national productions, including the one-hour documentary Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar, and Child Protective Services, a one-hour look inside the San Diego County agency responsible for the welfare of at risk children. Both programs also aired on public television stations nationwide. Finn has earned honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

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Mark Sauer

A newspaperman for more than 30 years, Mark Sauer joined KPBS in October 2010 and previously served as the host of the KPBS Roundtable. He spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan. A features/human-interest writer in the UT's Currents section for many years, Mark also spent about a third of his UT career as an editor and reporter on the Metro Desk. He has covered a wide range of events: Wild fires in Southern California and Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; Super Bowls and the World Series; foster care and child-abuse issues; the Roman Catholic Diocese's sexual-abuse scandal and bankruptcy; royal visits of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Republican and Democratic national conventions; high-profile criminal trials; and many other stories, from the silly to the sublime. Along the way, he interviewed everyone from presidents to pan-handlers. His work exposing the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse garnered Pulitzer Prize nominations and many regional and local journalism awards, including Best in the West, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and several San Diego and California bar-association awards. Mark has a degree in journalism from Michigan State University.

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