Why were parents targeted in son’s road-crossing death? Drug use, Gaston DA says.
When 7-year-old Legend Jenkins died crossing a four-lane road while unsupervised, his parents were “graciously given” probation instead of jailtime after pleading guilty to felony child neglect, a Gaston County assistant district attorney said in court Monday.
But less than three months after his son died in a tragic car accident, 31-year-old Samuele Jenkins was back in jail. Prosecutors say he violated probation by using cocaine, smoking weed, leaving the county and tampering with his electronic monitor.
Concerns about Legend’s parents’ drug use aren’t new, Gaston District Attorney Travis Page told The Charlotte Observer. They are what pushed the Republican district attorney to prosecute the mourning couple before their son’s funeral.
On May 27, Jenkins and his wife, Jessica Ivey, 30, gave Legend and their other son, who was 10, permission to walk alone the couple blocks between their home and a shopping mall. But they had to stay on the phone with their dad.
The siblings agreed.
The last thing Jenkins heard before rushing to the scene was a cry from his older son.
“Legend, no!” the boy yelled when his brother stepped into the street, colliding with a Jeep Cherokee, the father told the Observer’s news partner, WSOC.
Legend died that night at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte.
Two days later, Gastonia police charged Jenkins and Ivey with involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. Both pleaded guilty to child neglect in late June, and prosecutors dropped the remaining charges.
Page was reluctant to discuss at length his pursuit of charges against Jenkins and Ivey. His prosecution drew statewide and national criticism, with one North Carolina senator responding by reupping a bill that would revise state child neglect law to not include “independent activities,” like walking to school or nearby “commercial or recreational facilities.”
“Kids being outside is important to their growth and their development, but that’s not what this was,” Page said Monday. “I will say this: One of the concerns that I had was drug use by the parents, particularly on the day that this happened.”
Page declined to elaborate on what evidence supported those concerns, but about an hour after the Observer’s interview with Page, Jenkins appeared in court.
Father convicted of child neglect back in court
According to court documents, Jenkins was arrested last week on a collection of probation violation charges. He allegedly:
- tested positive for cocaine and marijuana on July 15 — about three weeks after being released on probation, which prohibits drug use for three years.
- failed to complete court-ordered parenting classes.
- allowed his electronic monitor to lose power and tampered with its strap.
- broke curfew and traveled to Cleveland County without approval.
Jenkins told Mecklenburg Superior Judge Karen Eady-Williams, who was presiding over the Gaston County courtroom Monday, that he has completed five of the eight required courses and that his monitor’s battery had fallen out, and he tried to fix it.
Eady-Williams declined the prosecutor’s request to hold Jenkins on a $75,000 secured bond, setting instead a $10,000 secured bond.
District Attorney Page Monday said he felt Jenkins and Ivey “deserve grace more than prison.”
He said prosecuting cases like theirs serves as “an opportunity” and “a crossroads” to intervene and prevent. Page said he viewed the criminal justice system as a way “to connect people to the services that we believe they need,” like substance abuse assessments or parenting classes.
“The worst thought imaginable is a parent having to bury a child. That’s not the way the world is supposed to work, and I think we have a duty to take some type of action and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
