A mother accused of killing her 22-month-old son allegedly made a disturbing recording of the boy, who appeared to be in pain, and also allegedly texted a friend she “couldn’t stand him,” a prosecutor said last week.
Judge Edward J. McBride Jr. on Thursday, Sept. 5, ruled that Brown should be jailed pending trial on charges of murder, aggravated assault, and endangering the welfare of a child charges.
The boy’s body was discovered on Oct. 11, 2018, and police didn’t know the child’s identity until DNA test results came back several months later. The boy’s father had reported him missing in December, NJ.com reported.
“Jah’vi’s gonna make me get a case for real. I’m gonna knock him smooth out and call the cops on myself. I can’t stand him,” Prosecutor Kevin Moran claimed she wrote in a Facebook message.
Moran also described the disturbing videos.
He said, “There are multiple videos of this defendant filming Jah’vi Brown, showing him in clear distress, showing him in pain, which this defendant narrated, mocking him. On Aug. 23, your honor, the last time Jah’vi is seen alive, there’s a video from this defendant’s phone at 3:24 p.m. of the victim on the couch—and that video geolocates to this defendant’s apartment in Bellmawr—where Jah’vi Brown is effectively immobile and appears to be in pain.”
She also allegedly searched, “Can a concussion cause breathing to stop,” “head injury toddler,” “breathing signs of dying,” and “symptoms of broken ribs in infants,” the report noted.
A local medical examiner ruled Jah’vi’s cause of death was a homicide. The boy was wrapped in the same brand of Walmart trash bags that his mother had used, prosecutors said.
Moran said she was looking for tickets to Florida and wanted to flee to the state. “If she had the means, she would have fled,” he said.
Defense attorneys argued that if Tynaizha Brown killed her son, she should be facing manslaughter charges as it was likely a case of corporal punishment gone wrong.
A criminal complaint claimed Brown hit the child “in the face repeatedly, causing two black eyes, bruises on her ear and scratches all over her chest.”
Brown also got a 90-day sentence in jail for a forgery charge in 2015, the paper noted.
Meanwhile, the boy’s father, Anthony Burnett, was charged with abusing Brown and Jah'vi.
“They were being simultaneously investigated and I guess as a result of text messages that they claim came from her, she lost the battle,” her attorney, Robin Lord, told NJ.com. She added that Burnett “set [Brown] up” with a “fake text” app and admitted to officials he had used it in the past.
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