He wanted pickles, so Tamera Summerfield packed pickles and apple sauce - his favorite – in his bags to take on the trip.
Two-year-old Ja’marsay had never been away from his mother, but Summerfield
thought she knew her boyfriend’s relatives well enough to send her only child on a mini-vacation with them. They supposedly left Shreveport Oct. 7 headed to Austin, Texas.
Days then nearly two weeks went by, and Summerfield never heard from her child.
“I kept calling them and calling them,” the 28-year-old said. “And
his (her boyfriend) mama and sister kept telling me they had my baby. They were going to bring him home.”
It’s unknown if Ja’marsay ever made it Texas or even left Shreveport. Thursday night, one day after Summerfield reported him missing, detectives found the toddler’s body locked in a storage room attached to her Panetella Lane residence.
The woman’s boyfriend Tristan Anderson, 26, later was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree murder in connection with the child’s death. Summerfield told police she left the child with Anderson and believed Ja'marsay was in the joint custody of Anderson's mother and sister.
“”I was blind,” Summerfield said in a cracking voice.
“I would have never left my baby with someone who would have hurt him. That was the first time I’ve ever done that, and he killed my baby.”
Authorities are awaiting autopsy reports to determine when and how the child died. Police would not say if there were signs of physical abuse to the child. They also declined to say if more arrests are expected.
[...]
Anderson was among a group of people who accompanied the child’s mother to the police station Thursday morning to formally file a missing persons report. It was then that investigators began questioning the potential witnesses.
Bookmarks