Nine years after 14-year-old Jabez Spann disappeared from Sarasota’s Newtown neighborhood, police still have no suspects and no answers, and they’re asking the public once more for help cracking the case. Spann went missing on September 4, 2017, and his skeletal remains weren’t discovered until February 19, 2019, in a rural pasture across the county line in Manatee County.
According to Tampa Bay 28, the Sarasota Police Department believes Spann may have witnessed a murder shortly before he vanished. That belief traces back to a killing just one week earlier: 31-year-old Travis Combs was fatally shot in the upper torso on August 28, 2017, in a vacant grassy lot near 22nd Street and North Orange Avenue in Sarasota after being chased by three men during a suspected robbery attempt, according to CBS News.
Spann was last seen around 1 a.m. on September 5, 2017, near Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 22nd Street in Newtown, shortly after attending a Labor Day weekend barbecue and a vigil for Combs, per Patch. Newtown is a historically Black neighborhood in north Sarasota, and both the shooting and Spann’s disappearance unfolded within blocks of each other in that community.
A Witness Who Recanted
The link between the two cases hardened weeks later, when Sarasota police arrested 55-year-old Reginald Parker on a charge of accessory after the fact to murder for allegedly impeding the Combs homicide investigation. Parker had initially told Spann’s family that he saw Spann at the murder scene shouting, “Oh my God, y’all shot him,” before recanting that account to detectives, according to Sarasota police as reported by CBS News. Three witnesses reportedly signed sworn depositions describing Parker’s initial statements before he walked them back…