A father from South Carolina is facing charges after police suspect he killed his five children and dumped their bodies on a dirt road in rural Alabama.
The children ranged in age from 1 to 8 years old.
Timothy Ray Jones Jr., 32, led investigators to the site where the bodies of the children were found, off a two-lane highway near Camden, Ala., said Alabama Department of Public Safety spokesman Sgt. Steve Jarrett.
Jones has been charged with child neglect and police expect to lodge additional charges against him in connection with the children’s deaths, authorities in South Carolina and Mississippi said.
Wilcox County, Alabama, District Attorney Michael Jackson told The Associated Press that Jones is suspected of killing the children in South Carolina before bringing their bodies to Alabama.
Their mother reported the children missing on September 3. She is divorced from Jones but shares custody of the children. It isn’t known why or how the children were killed but police suspected something was wrong after pulling Jones over on Saturday.
Jones was detained in Smith County on Saturday after being stopped at a motor vehicle checkpoint near Raleigh, Mississippi, and charged with drunken driving, Smith County Sheriff Charlie Crumpton said in a news release.
Crumpton said Jones became agitated when a deputy questioned him about an odor of chemicals coming from the Cadillac Escalade he was driving. The deputy found what were believed to be chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine and a substance believed to be the street drug Spice, a form of synthetic marijuana, Crumpton said. A sheriff’s office investigator was called and found what appeared to be bleach, muriatic acid, blood and possible body fluids, he said.
During a background check, police discovered that Jones was wanted in South Carolina “regarding a welfare concern of his children,” who were on a national missing persons list, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
Investigators from several departments and the FBI started looking for the missing children on Monday, Crumpton said. He said the children’s decomposed bodies were found in individual plastic garbage bags.
So far, Jones has only been charged with child neglect while police and the FBI investigate the murders.
More on this story as it unfolds.
SOURCE: Huffington Post | VIDEO CREDIT: News Inc.
