On the morning of July 5, 2025, 16-year-old Zariah Finley Dodd, a Black female, was found shot to death in the grass at Marivue Park in west Phoenix, near 55th Avenue and Osborn Road. She had left a group home in Surprise, Arizona, the previous evening, telling staff she was going for a walk on the night of July 4 and never returned. Shortly after sunrise, around 5:58 a.m., Phoenix police responded to reports of unknown trouble at the park and discovered her unresponsive with a gunshot wound;
fire personnel pronounced her dead at the scene. At the time of her killing, Zariah was in state custody and approximately 22 weeks pregnant with a baby girl she had planned to name Zaloni, whose life was also lost in the shooting.
In the weeks that followed, investigators traced her final movements back to the group home where she had been living and gathered information from those who knew her. Zariah had spent much of her life in Arizona’s child welfare system, cycling through roughly 20 different group homes and foster placements, including Sunshine Residential Homes, which was responsible for her care at the time she disappeared. Her kinship caregiver and former group home manager, Richilyn Fox, later said she believed Zariah should never have been allowed to walk out alone that night, especially while pregnant, and her family members publicly questioned how a teenager under state supervision became pregnant and then ended up killed in a park.
By late July and early August 2025, Phoenix police announced significant developments: two suspects had been identified and taken into custody in connection with the killing of Zariah and her unborn daughter. Authorities named 36-year-old Jurrell Davis and 18-year-old Jechri James-Gillett as the alleged perpetrators. Investigators stated that Davis was the father of Zariah’s unborn child, and that the two men had conspired together to carry out the homicide. According to a probable cause statement and police briefings, James-Gillett is accused of shooting Zariah, while Davis is alleged to have orchestrated the killing. Both men were booked into jail; James-Gillett faces murder charges, while Davis faces multiple counts including premeditated first-degree murder and sexual misconduct with a minor, among other related offenses.
Court documents and investigative reporting also revealed disturbing details about the relationship between Zariah and Davis in the months leading up to her death. Zariah reportedly told a Department of Child Safety worker that Davis had threatened her with a gun to force her into having sex, and records cited by reporters indicate that she had expressed fear of him even as her pregnancy progressed. Police and prosecutors allege that this pattern of coercion culminated in the plan that led to her being lured or taken from the group home area and ultimately shot in or near Marivue Park, then left in the grass where a passerby discovered her. As the criminal cases proceed, authorities have said the investigation established that Davis and James-Gillett acted together in planning and executing the killing, and that both are being held on high bonds while facing two counts of first-degree murder each—for Zariah and her unborn child.
