The Houma Police Department in Louisiana provided an update on a 2-year-old boy who was found dead last week in a trashcan near a Houma home.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Houma police released still images last week from surveillance video showing Maya Jones and Jermaine Robinson leaving their home off of Cadiere Street, carrying what appeared to be the same black duffel and returning back home at about 5 a.m. without the duffel.
They were arrested after the body of Ezekiel Harry was found at about 6 p.m. Police said Jones was the child’s mother and Robinson was his mother’s live-in boyfriend.
Harry was reported missing around noon on Tuesday. After the missing persons report, Houma police said they received a call that the boy may have been abducted.
When police contacted the boy’s mother, she said she had been out walking with her children when someone in a gray truck grabbed the boy and sped off. Houma police investigators determined that the story was “inaccurate.”
NBC 6 reports that Jones actually left her three children, including Ezekial, with Robinson on the day in question.
The Houma Police Department later announced that Ezekiel died of severe trauma to his head, leaving loved ones reeling in pain from the loss.
“He was the life of the party man, he was, that was our boy,” Ezekiel’s stepmother, Ivy Guidry, told BRPROUD News.
The boy’s grandmother, Cynthia Harry, said Ezekial was funny and “feisty,” and loved to play.
Meanwhile, Terrebonne Parish District Attorney Joseph Waitz Jr said that Harry had been the subject of abuse before.
“We are aware of abusive patterns in the past involving this young child,” he said. “Some of the stuff that early on investigations show, just shocks the conscious, that this type of abuse would go on.”
Waitz said that prosecutors were considering seeking the death penalty in the case but would consider “the wants and the desires of the family” in making that decision.
Neighbors posted on social media that they had warned the police about alleged abuse going on in the victim’s home; the Houma Police Department is now being criticized for an alleged lack of action to save the child.
“Hard to believe no one was able to do something before things led to this, Really unacceptable. This needs to be extremely investigated. On all parts,” Rick Hebert posted on the Houma Today Facebook page, according to Houma Today.
Anyone with information about the case should contact Crime Stoppers Bayou Region at 800-743-7433 or online at www.crimestoppersbr.org. A reward of up to $1,000 in cash is being offered for information that leads to an arrest.
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[Featured image: Featured image: Ezekiel Harry/Houma Police Department]
Additional reporting by KC Wildmoon
