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The 11-year-old Jayden-Lee Meek was found undressed on the staircase of his complex where he lived.
The mother of 11-year-old Jayden-Lee Meek says she believes that if police had acted more swiftly in searching for her son, he would have been found alive. On Wednesday, the young boy was found dead and undressed on the staircase of the complex where he lived in Fleurhof in Johannesburg.
He was found with multiple bruises on his body several hours after being reported missing after school on Tuesday.
On Saturday morning, a large group of concerned community members, together with the family of Jayden-Lee Meek, marched to the Florida Police Station to demand justice for his murder.
According to the family, the boy was dropped off by scholar transport on Tuesday afternoon, but never made it home. A search then ensued, and his badly bruised body was found by a resident just a few meters from his home on Wednesday morning.
Jayden-Lee’s mother, Tiffany Meek, says the police need to account for their lack of urgency in searching for her son.
“They arrived on the scene officially even after news crews, community members, and family and friends. An entire crime scene was compromised due to this because everyone was just allowed to walk freely where a body was discovered. Does this sound like something that should have happened? Is that protocol according to the law? Even residents were allowed to leave in the presence of police when this entire complex is a crime scene. Lastly, the police were sent out in numbers to contain a community uproar, yet they could not send two cars to start a search when I reached the police station to make a report. So, this begs the question: is the uproar containment and making sure no time is lost, or were they killing time because they were about to knock off, which was the case because they were leaving their shift?” she says.
WATCH: Fleurhof Boy murder March: Community calling for justice and law enforcement
Tiffany says their family also is still battling to come to terms with Jayden’s death. She says there are too many questions that they urgently need answers to.
“We, as the family, are not coping, but we are obviously grateful to the community for their support. We, obviously, got a lot of questions based on everything that has been happening. We want people to speak to us, and then we can pose those questions to them because until they contact us. We are not sitting with any sort of information. No one is coming forward with anything. So, we just feel very in the dark at the moment. As a family, we don’t know what to think. What is the progress on this case? Nothing is being answered,” she adds.
Meanwhile, community members of Fluerhof say they are tired of empty promises and are demanding that police bring the suspects to book as quickly as possible.
“The purpose of today is justice for the boy. We want justice, and we want police to do their work. And we want the perpetrator to be arrested. They didn’t tell us anything, and they didn’t even come now, and we want the police to tell us the truth and what they are doing with this case for the boy, and at the end, we want justice for the boy,” says a community member.
Police say they are doing everything in their power to track down those responsible for Jayden-Lee’s murder.
