SOUTH CAROLINA – Law enforcement officials said charges are pending against a 32-year-old Lexington, South Carolina man in connection with the disappearance of his five children, ages 1 to 8 years old, authorities said.
Five sets of human remains were found off Highway 10 near Camden, Alabama.
Sheriff’s department detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Timothy Ray Jones on a charge of unlawful neglect of a child by a legal custodian, Lexington County Sheriff Lewis McCarty said.
Detectives expect to obtain additional arrest warrants for Jones as the investigation remains active and ongoing. Detectives will return Jones to Lexington County to face charges in connection with the disappearance of his five children, according to law enforcement.
The five children were last seen in Lexington County with Jones, who has joint custody of the children. Jones is divorced from the children’s mother.
Lexington County Coroner Earl Wells was making arrangements on Tuesday to transport what detectives think are five sets of human remains from Camden, Alabama, to Lexington County in order to conduct autopsies on the remains and positively identify the remains.
Jones was being held on Tuesday at the Smith County Jail in Raleigh, Mississippi, on charges connected to a motor vehicle public safety checkpoint that Smith County Sheriff’s Office deputies conducted on Saturday, September 6, McCarty said.
Smith County sheriff’s deputies detained Jones at about 7:57 p.m. on Saturday at the public safety checkpoint and contacted the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department after determining that Jones and his five children were listed as missing persons on the National Crime Information Center computer database. The five children were not with Jones when deputies detained Jones.
The children’s mother reported Jones and the five children missing to the Sheriff’s Department at 6:11 p.m. on Wednesday, September 3, McCarty said.
Deputies entered the five children and Jones as missing persons on the National Crime Information Center computer database. The five children lived at a home near Lexington with Jones, who is the children’s primary legal custodian.
The mother of the five children told Sheriff’s Department deputies that she had been unable to contact Jones, McCarty said. The mother also told deputies that there had been other occasions when she had been unable to contact Jones. Neighbors told deputies that Jones said he was moving with his children from his home near Lexington to another state.
According to reports from the state Department of Social Services, KTLA-TV reported that case workers had expressed concerns about the children in the past, as early as 2011, but the most recurring complaint was that the Jones’ house was a mess.
According to KTLA, the first DSS visit came in September 2011, a report says, when a caseworker visited the home because of allegations that the kids — at the time, only three — were dirty and not attending school. The mother, who was pregnant, said the children were 3, 4 and 5 and too young to start school but that when they were of age, they would be home-schooled, the report says.
The caseworker expressed concern that the kids were barefoot and that there were tools and construction items lying in the living room, the report says.