The remains of a five-year-old boy, who was non-verbal, were found wrapped in towels and some blankets, with authorities discovering he was “severely malnourished” at the time of his death
A mother has been charged with murder and tampering with evidence after the boy’s body was brutally dumped by a roadside.
The remains of a non-verbal five-year-old boy were found dumped in a bin bag along a major road in February, and his mother has been charged with killing him, and tampering with evidence by trying to hide his body. Initially, she had been charged with manslaughter, it has been reported, but new evidence caused the charge to upgraded to murder. After making the horror discovery, the local police saw that the young boy was “severely malnourished” at the time of his death, with his bones visible and his ribs sticking out starkly – he weighed only 20 pounds.
The mother and son’s loved ones had not heard from them for some days when the little boy’s grandmother sounded the alarm and reported them missing to the police. The mother, Jalynda Smith, 36, all the while was allegedly covering her tracks.
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Smith’s sister received a strange message from a number she did not know, saying “to check her email for emails from two different email addresses” according to the arrest report. The contact appears to have been from Smith, and the affidavit alleges that it saw Smith instruct her sister to download a messaging app called Telegram, which keeps communications encrypted. Smith also told her sister not to mention to their mother that they had spoken.
“1st please don’t tell ma u heard from me and please don’t tell the police I’ll tell you everything but please download the app Telegram I need to make sure everything is secure and u cant find me,” the message reads.
The sister asked what was going on, requesting information about her nephew, with Smith replying: “I came into the house and he was not breathing,” the police affidavit claims.
Her son’s remains were found along the side of the Lillian Highway, which runs along the coast of Perdido Bay, Florida. The location he was left was just half an hour away from the family home. After the messages had been exchanged between the sisters, the boy’s aunt went to Smith’s home and spotted that the bedsheets were gone. The house was also freezing cold. Increasingly concerned the sister contacted the police with her worries about her nephew – which were exacerbated by a neighbour it has been reported telling her that she had seen neither mother nor son for some days.
The little boy was eventually found wrapped up in sheets, and some towels, inside the bin bag beyond the main road’s guardrails.
Just a few hours after finding the youngster’s body, Smith was arrested, and initially police accused her of Aggravated Negligent Manslaughter of a Child – per WEAR News.
Nonverbal and autistic, the young boy showed clear signs of neglect and dehydration the local authorities have claimed. ” The torso and extremities of the child appeared to be absent of meaningful muscle and the child appeared emaciated,” police wrote in a probable cause affidavit. “I could see the outline of the child’s rib cage through the skin and the lower abdomen was sunken inward, toward the back.” WEAR News has reported that the arrest report claims, “his mother Jalynda Smith caused [this] either by starvation or being medically negligent.”
In his last medical appointment in December 2025, he weighed 30 pounds, which means that in just over a month, he had lost an entire third of his total body weight, something doctors said was “incredibly concerning”. Back in 2021, he had been diagnosed with “Failure to thrive” which happens when a child is not putting on the required amount of weight, or growing in the normal way. Smith was then required to take her son to the doctor once a year to check on his weight gain, and reportedly it had been improving.
Social services had got involved twice before, once in 2022 and on another occasion in 2025. The first saw Smith accused of leaving her very young son home alone in a dirty nappy, for which she was arrested for neglect and had to complete a “Pre-Trial Intervention parental skills course.” The second occasion also saw her accused of leaving her son at home by himself, whilst she went out to work.
Smith has been charged with first degree murder and evidence tampering, and is being held in Escambia County Jail since she was arrested, and has not been given bail. Her trial is scheduled to begin on 1 June 2026.
