OAKLAND — A 2-year-old boy’s body was recently found in Napa County after detectives suspect he was killed somewhere along International Boulevard in Oakland, police announced Thursday.
The discovery of the boy’s body on Dec. 23 ended a daylong search for the child in a case that appears to have stretched across Northern California, from the streets of Oakland and San Pablo to Napa Valley. Police have since identified him as Jamari Madkins.
But nearly a week after the Oakland Police Department’s grisly find, authorities remained tight-lipped about the case — leaving unclear exactly where the boy lived, why his last moments alive were in Oakland or even how long he has been dead.
“This is a tragic case of a 2-year-old child,” said Oakland police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, adding that his officers were in contact with the boy’s family, specifically his grandmother. “This should not have happened. My heart goes out to the family. My heart goes out to the community.”
The investigation began when the San Pablo Police Department notified Oakland authorities just before 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 23 that a toddler had possibly been killed in Oakland.
Later that same day, investigators discovered the child’s body in Napa County, Armstrong said. The boy’s remains were found outside, though Armstrong gave no other details on where he was found.
It is unclear how long the child had been dead, however, “the child was exactly where we were told the child would be,” said Armstrong, without elaborating.
San Pablo police helped detain a person with “a close connection to the child” in relation with the case — though no murder or child abuse charges had been filed Thursday afternoon against that person in the child’s death, Armstrong said. He did not provide further specifics about the potential suspect.
Law enforcement sources, however, confirmed that the person detained was a 21-year-old Antioch man who acted as the pimp of the boy’s 17-year-old mother. He is being held on a felony human trafficking charge of coercing a minor to engage in commercial sex, along with the additional felony charges of pimping, and pandering, according to court documents obtained by this news organization.
The boy’s mother began dating the 21-year-old man in late September and soon began working as a prostitute for him in various cities across the region until just before Christmas, the court documents say. That included at least one stop near 19th Avenue and E. 15th Street, in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood.
Police said the boy appears to have been killed somewhere along International Boulevard, not far from where his mother was being trafficked. No cause of death had been determined by Thursday afternoon, though an autopsy was planned, Armstrong said.
San Pablo police pulled the 21-year-old man and 17-year-old girl over in the early morning hours of Dec. 23, during which an officer realized that the teen — who lived in Fairfield — was the subject of a missing person’s report, the court documents said. Until that point, the man and the teen girl had been living in the man’s vehicle and at a Stockton motel.
Armstrong said that the Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services did not appear to have had any prior involvement with the child. The county department is the main civil agency responsible for responding to reports of child abuse and neglect across the county.
The killing represents the 117th death investigated as a homicide by Oakland police in 2022. Since the boy’s body was discovered, three more people have been killed within the city.
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