LaDonia Boggs and Kyon Jones
Prosecutors in Washington, D.C. have changed course after police initially arrested a mother for felony murder in the presumed death of her infant son.
LaDonia Boggs, 38, was originally accused of murder over the weekend in the death of 2-month-old Kyon Jones, who was last seen alive on May 5. Boggs readily admitted to responsibility for the child’s disappearance in a series of media interviews prior to her arrest.
“The last thing that I remember was that I had rolled over, and he was on my chest,” she told District-based “missing-persons advocate” Henderson Long. “After that, when I was asleep, rolled over, noticed he was unresponsive–breathing–and I panicked.”
“He was asleep on my chest and when I woke up he wasn’t breathing anymore because he was just that small,” Boggs continued. “He was only two months old. He was a premature baby.”
“I came back in the house and got a blanket and his car seat, and wrapped it up and took it outside and just throwed it in the trash,” Boggs said.
“I wrapped it up, took it outside, and disposed of it in the trash,” Boggs reiterated later on. “And that’s what happened.”
The distraught mother was arrested by D.C. police on Friday and accused of murder. On Saturday, she appeared before the D.C. Superior Court where prosecutors declined to push the murder charge and instead went forward with an evidence tampering charge instead, according to Washington, D.C.-based NBC affiliate WRC.
The outlet noted that additional charges could still be filed at a later date, citing an anonymous law enforcement source. Investigators unsuccessfully searched a landfill in Virginia for the baby’s remains.
Court documents reviewed by Law&Crime allege that Boggs eventually told police the same story she gave on camera–after giving various different versions of events to the boy’s father and to police in the days before. According to one iteration of the original story, a “lady” from Child Protective Services had taken Jones from her at the beginning of May along with all of the boy’s belongings.
On May 8, according to a police affidavit, Boggs finally admitted that she fell asleep while holding her child and that when she woke up, she discovered that he wasn’t breathing. In turn, Boggs said, she panicked and tried to dispose of the baby’s body.
The court papers note:
On Saturday May 8, 2021, the Defendant contacted a homicide detective and stated that she wanted to speak with them again about her baby. At her request, detectives responded to the Defendant’s location and interviewed her. This interview was audio recorded. The Defendant told the detectives that the decedent died in her house in her bedroom. She reported that she and the decedent were lying on her bed together, and the baby was between her and the wall. According to the Defendant, the decedent was lying on his stomach, and she was lying on her right side; when she woke up her stomach was on top of him. She told the detective that she rolled off of the decedent and that’s when she noticed he was under her and found that he was no longer breathing. The Defendant stated that she wrapped the decedent in a blue baby-blanket and placed him in the dumpster outside of the apartment building. The Defendant insisted that her children were all outside at the time this happened, and that none of the kids asked about the decedent when they came back inside. The Defendant admitted that she was under the influence of PCP when she rolled on top of the decedent. The Defendant also admitted that she had told another homicide detective that she had been hallucinating the day the decedent died, but she could not remember what she had been hallucinating.
The affidavit also suggests that police believe they found evidence of the infant being thrown into the trash.
“The Defendant was observed on surveillance video on May 5 carrying an infant car seat outside through a door at the premises,” police claim. “The Defendant was also captured in the May 5 surveillance, wearing a red shirt and blue pants, carrying a plastic bag filled with unknown items in one hand and dragging a cardboard box in the other hand. The cardboard box appears to contain something like a white cloth or blanket and appears large enough to carry a 2-month-old infant.”
Boggs faces a maximum three years in prison if convicted of the evidence tampering charge.
[image of the defendant via screengrab/WUSA; image of victim via D.C. Metro Police]