The man who dropped the body of a Detroit-area teenage girl in a dumpster “left a trail of digital evidence” implicating her in her death, despite a futile and unusual search that ended with the body being found in a landfill. prosecutors told jurors Tuesday.
Jaylin Brazier, 25, is on trial for second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Zion Foster, whose body was never found.
In 2022, Detroit police raked through tons of rotting trash at a suburban landfill to try to find any traces, an unprecedented move for a law enforcement agency. The search, sometimes in 90-degree heat and humidity, was called off after five months.
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“Did she suffocate? Was she raped? Did she die from some unexplained natural cause?” Deputy Prosecutor Ryan Elsey said in his opening address to the jury. “The search for Zion’s body became the primary focus of the investigation.”
Brazier and Foster were cousins. He denies killing her and claims Foster died suddenly while using marijuana at her Detroit home.
FILE – Trash is unloaded at the Pine Tree Acres Landfill in Lenox Township, Michigan, on July 28, 2022. A trial is underway in Detroit in the death of a 17-year-old girl whose disappearance prompted a search for a large amount of decaying garbage. Jaylin Brazier was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Zion Foster, a teenager whose body was never found. (AP Photo/Paul Sancia, File)
Brazier told police that he panicked and hid the body in the trunk of his car after midnight and drove to the dump, investigators said, and investigators said the revelation led to a search of the landfill. It is said that they were connected.
Defense lawyer Brian Brown said this was a result of “fear and bad decisions”.
“Jaylin was scared,” Brown said. “He may not have made the right decision, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t make him a murderer.”
Elsey told jurors that experts ruled out marijuana-related deaths. He said Brazier had “left behind a damning trail of digital evidence”.
Prosecutors said Brazier searched the internet for information about whether garbage trucks shredded trash and whether he could face criminal charges if no bodies were found.
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Elsey said that while serving time in prison for lying to police, Brazier told his girlfriend there was “nothing to worry about.” “He was wrong. He can’t get away with murder just by disposing of the body.”
