A St. Louis man has been sentenced to life in prison for gunning down 19-year-old Jadun Byrd in a parking lot in the city’s Ville neighborhood in March 2022, as the teen’s mother listened over a FaceTime call. Jonathon Jones, now 21, was 17 at the time of the shooting and was certified to stand trial as an adult in July 2024 before being convicted of second-degree murder.
According to First Alert 4, Byrd had taken a Lyft on March 2, 2022, to meet his mother at her workplace, but investigators say a white Dodge Journey drove toward him as he walked through the parking lot and its driver fired multiple shots. Byrd died after being shot multiple times in the 2400 block of Whittier. Per the station’s report, Byrd’s mother reportedly heard the gunshots and watched her son fall to the ground during the call.
The station notes that surveillance video, according to prosecutors, showed the Dodge Journey following the Lyft Byrd had gotten into and circling the area where he lived before the shooting. Jones’s fingerprints were found on the driver’s side of the vehicle, and multiple guns were recovered during a search of the home where he was eventually found. Other outlets have offered additional detail on how that surveillance evidence came together: KSDK reported that investigators used Real Time Crime Center cameras to track the SUV, capturing footage of Jones entering the driver’s seat 30 minutes before the shooting and exiting 30 minutes after, while two passengers inside the vehicle identified him as the shooter.
A Second Killing Tied to an Earlier Escape
Byrd’s murder was not Jones’s first. He had already been convicted in July 2024 and sentenced that September to 22.5 years in prison for second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the September 2021 shooting death of 29-year-old Brandon Scott near the Gateway Arch, according to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, who tried Jones alongside co-defendant Mark Perry following a traffic dispute. Prosecutors have said Jones was on the run when he killed Byrd, having escaped from the St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center in November 2021 while being held on suspicion in the Scott homicide — four months before Byrd was shot…