LAS VEGAS (AP) - A father with a criminal history of child abuse told detectives his 13-year-old son died after falling to the floor when he struck him in the face, and he put the boy’s body in a makeshift grave in a vacant lot, according to a police report made public Friday.
The Las Vegas police account of a Wednesday interview with Paul Darell Jones didn’t pinpoint when Aaron Jones died. But it said Aaron’s sister told police that her brother disappeared in late December.
Aaron and his sister were among 13 children living at the time with the father in a one-bedroom short-stay apartment not far from where the boy’s body was found Tuesday, the police report said.
The Clark County coroner said it could take several weeks to the boy’s cause of death.
Paul Jones and his girlfriend, Latoya Williams-Miley, both 33, are each facing murder charges in Aaron’s death.
Paul Jones was already serving jail time for violating probation in a 2015 abuse case involving another child when Williams-Miley was arrested Thursday. Her arrest report wasn’t immediately available.
Police said this week that no one reported the boy’s disappearance until county Child Protective Services officials filed a missing person report April 14.
On Tuesday, while circulating a flier issued by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, cousins found Aaron’s decomposing body covered with a pile of rocks in the vacant lot off Boulder Highway several miles southeast of downtown Las Vegas, police said.
Paul Jones, who was sentenced this week to a year in jail in the 2015 case, told reporters in jailhouse interviews that his son ran away from home and he had nothing to do with the death. He said he didn’t report Aaron missing because he knew he had a warrant out for his own arrest.
A court-appointed attorney who represented Paul Jones in his child abuse conviction said he doesn’t represent him in the murder case.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Williams-Miley had a lawyer.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.