John Jefferson
Diaja M. Smith and Jacoby Robinson Sr. (KVSN/YouTube screenshots) and Jacoby Robinson, Jr. (LVMPD)
A 23-year-old mother and a 24-year-old father in Nevada have been arrested and accused of killing their 2-year-old son, who was reported missing last week before being found dead in a dumpster with bruises covering his body from head to toe.
Diaja M. Smith and Jacoby Robinson were both taken into custody and charged with one count each of open murder and child abuse in the slaying of young Jacoby Robinson, Jr., records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a news release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, officers at about 8:25 p.m. responded to a home in the 400 block of South 15th Street in regard to a report of a missing 2-year-old. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders immediately began searching for the boy — later identified as Robinson Jr.
In an Endangered Missing Juvenile notice, police said the victim was last seen alive at about 7:45 p.m. on Thursday, June 6, near the family’s Las Vegas home. He was searing a long-sleeved blue shirt, blue jeans, and blue Crocs. Police asked all hospitals to check their registries for the victim and notify authorities.
At about 12:58 a.m. on Friday, June 7, authorities located the body of Robinson Jr. “inside of a garbage dumpster” in the 1300 block of Lewis Avenue. Medical personnel pronounced the child dead on the scene.
“The LVMPD Homicide Section was notified and took over the investigation,” the department said in the release. “Through the course of the investigation, detectives determined that the two-year-old’s mother, 23-year-old Diaja Smith was the suspect in the case. Smith was arrested and is currently in the process of being booked into the Clark County Detention Center for open murder and other felony charges.”
A man who lives in the area where the victim’s body was discovered told Fox Las Vegas affiliate KVVU that he saw Smith with her two other children on Thursday evening near the dumpster.
“I saw a lady sitting there with her two other kids, really hysterical saying ‘somebody took my kid, somebody took my kid,’” Kelvyn Barnett, who lives in the 1300 block of Lewis Avenue, told the station. “To find out that she was the one that did this is the most shocking aspect of it all.”
During a court hearing over the weekend, prosecutors told the court that Robinson confessed that he had been in the home as the victim was beaten and whipped to the point that he began throwing up, Las Vegas NBC affiliate KSNV reported.
Prosecutors also alleged that Robinson Jr. suffered numerous “very concerning injuries,” including a “pattern of abrasions in his genital area consisting of banding from rubber bands that officers saw in the home,” KSNV reported.
Ultimately, authorities said that nearly the child’s entire body showed signs of injury from the brutal whippings.
The Clark County Coroner’s Office will perform an autopsy to determine the manner and cause of death.
Smith and Robinson are both being held in the Clark County Detention Center without bond. They are scheduled to appear in court again on Tuesday.
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