Police have no evidence, suspects or promising leads, but the case points to a kidnapping because they found no trace of her after combing a 3-mile radius around her home.
“This little girl doesn’t just fall off the face of the earth,” Glendale police Sgt. Brent Coombs said Monday.
More than 100 officers and volunteers have looked in pools, garbage bins, and shrubs, interviewed and searched the homes of registered sex offenders in the area, and stopped at every door to spread news about the disappearance.
But Jahessye’s family said that they don’t believe that police have given her disappearance enough attention because she’s black and her mother has a criminal history.
“GOD’S GONNA BRING THIS CHILD HOME.”
“We feel that law enforcement is not active in finding Jahessye and that they’re more active in persecuting me instead of finding out where she is,” said Jerice Hunter, Jahessye’s mother.
In October 2005, Hunter and her then-husband George Shockley were arrested in California in a child abuse case.
Hunter pleaded no contest to corporal punishment and served about four years in prison before she was released on parole in May 2010.
Hunter’s oldest child, 14 at the time, told police that his mother routinely beat the children.
George Shockley is a convicted sex offender and is still in a California prison.
Hunter condemned members of the media at a demonstration for her daughter on Monday at the state capitol in Phoenix, saying that they’re too focused on her past and that she didn’t know Shockley was a sex offender until his arrest.
State Child Protective Services removed Hunter’s three other children from her home following Jahessye’s disappearance but refused to say why.
“GOD’S GONNA BRING THIS CHILD HOME.”
Glendale police say that Hunter, who is eight months pregnant, is not a suspect and that police had nothing to do with the state’s decision to take the children.
Jahessye’s grandmother, Shirley Johnson, has said that Hunter changed after her release from prison and loves her children.
“I have been forthcoming with law enforcement from day one. I let them turn my home into a crime scene hours after I reported that I couldn’t find my daughter,” she said. “They didn’t find anything, but they’re holding my children hostage.”
Hunter was joined by about a dozen family and friends at the demonstration, during which they held up signs with Jahessye’s photo and begged for Gov. Jan Brewer’s attention on the case.
Coombs said that Jahessye’s race has no effect on their efforts to find the girl and that the department has treated her family the same as they would treat any family in a missing child case – by repeatedly interviewing them for new details.
“GOD’S GONNA BRING THIS CHILD HOME.”
He said detectives are aware of Hunter’s criminal record, but “it cannot cloud the issue or make them tunnel-visioned.”
“They have to keep an open mind and look at every detail that comes in,” he said.
Coombs has repeatedly said that the case is the department’s No. 1 priority, that dozens of investigators were working the case and that the department would not stop until she’s found. Detectives were focused on following tips from the public and going over the information they’ve collected so far, he said.
The department also has offered a $10,000 reward for information that leads them to Jahessye, on top of a $1,000 reward being offered by Arizona’s Silent Witness tip line.
“GOD’S GONNA BRING THIS CHILD HOME.”
Coombs said that it’s very important for the public to realize that Jahessye may not look the same as she does in pictures of her that have been released.
“If I were an abductor or someone who has possession of her and I want to remain anonymous and I want to move about easily, I would alter her appearance as much as I could, even to the point of making her look like a little boy,” he said.
Jahessye’s case has drawn comparisons to the 1999 case of another Arizona girl, 11-year-old Mikelle Biggs. Mikelle vanished on Jan. 2, 1999, as she waited for an ice cream truck near her family’s home in Mesa; all that was left behind was a bicycle and two quarters. She remains missing.
Hunter said that she believes that Jahessye was kidnapped and pleaded for whoever took her to “bring my baby back home.”
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “The family is in turmoil. We want our child.”
“GOD’S GONNA BRING THIS CHILD HOME.”
