2 men face murder charges for unborn child in death of pregnant Phoenix teen

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Loved ones of the 16-year-old found dead in a Phoenix park gathered for a candlelight vigil in her honor Friday night.

Zariah Dodd was around five months pregnant when she was found shot to death in Marivue Park in Phoenix, where the vigil was held hours after police announced the arrests of two men now charged with first-degree murder.

Those in attendance brought balloons and wore T-shirts with the girl’s photo to honor her and the unborn baby she planned to name Zaloni.

The organizer, Richilyn Fox, said she used to manage one of the group homes Zariah lived in. After leaving the job, Fox said her family took in Zariah as a kinship caregiver, but Zariah was sent back to a group home setting because she would run away. Fox said Zariah was troubled, but a joy to be around.

“Funny, smart, intelligent, resilient, powerful. It didn’t matter what was thrown at her, she kept forward. She never looked back,” Fox said.

Police identified the two men charged in her murder as 36-year-old Jurrell Davis, who they said is also the father of her unborn child, and 18-year-old Jechri James-Gillett. Both are facing two counts of first-degree murder, in Dodd and the unborn baby’s death.

Davis is also facing sexual misconduct with a minor. Prosecutors say that Dodd told people she was going to meet the father of her child on July 4 and that James-Gillett was the person seen picking her up from a Surprise group home.

“They felt it necessary to take this 16-year-old’s life who had an unborn child,” said Phoenix Police Sgt. Rob Scherer. “To be able to rationalize that being okay and then actually putting a plan together and executing that plan, it’s imperative that people like this are off the street.”

Loved ones and advocates have a lot of questions about why she was able to go for a walk alone when staff at the Surprise group home she lived in knew she was pregnant and had a history of running away.

They said she wasn’t reported missing until midnight on July 5. Her body was discovered by a passerby walking their dog just hours later.

“So even making the report at 12 o’clock, but the curfew was 10 o’clock. There’s a gap. The missing person report should’ve been no less than 10:15 p.m. because she was missing by then,” said Fox.

Earlier this month, police were surveilling the Davis, and they spotted him in a car with another runaway girl, a 17-year-old who had been reported missing two months earlier.

Police arrested Davis on an unrelated weapons charge, and he’s been in jail since. Court documents also showed he was convicted of felony child abuse in 2008. Prosecutors say that before her death, Dodd was supposed to be interviewed by police about a sexual misconduct case involving Davis.

Davis and Gillett are being held on a $1 million cash bond.

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