A Hayward mother and her boyfriend have been charged with murder after authorities say the pair killed the woman’s 8-year-old daughter — a tragic outcome that relatives feared but say they were unable to stop despite numerous attempts.
The Merced County District Attorney’s Office on Monday charged Samantha Johnson, 30, and Dhante Jackson, 34, with abusing and murdering Johnson’s daughter, Sophia Mason. Sophia was reported missing by relatives earlier this month.
Court documents accuse the pair of killing Sophia sometime between Feb. 10 and March 11, 2022, as well as injuring and endangering Sophia between September 2021 and February 2022.
“Samantha Leann Johnson and Dhante Jackson did willfully and unlawfully under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm and death, injure, cause, and permit a child, Sophia Mason, to suffer and to be inflicted with unjustifiable physical pain and mental suffering,” the court document reads.
Johnson was being held without bail at the John Latorraca Correctional Facility in Merced County. She is scheduled to be arraigned March 28 in Merced County Superior Court. Meanwhile, Jackson remained at large.
The formal charges came two weeks after Sophia’s aunt reported her missing to the Hayward Police Department. The aunt described a “disturbing” phone call between Johnson and her mother, in which Johnson said that she would be traveling from Merced to the Bay Area without Sophia because she “gave her away.”
While the department was investigating the report, Hayward police arrested Johnson on March 10 on a warrant stemming from a 2021 allegation of child abuse in Alameda County.
The following day, Hayward police contacted the Merced Police Department for assistance in searching a possible address where Sophia was last seen — a home in the 500 block of Barclay Way in Merced. While executing a search warrant, officers discovered Sophia’s body inside of the home, which is where Jackson was believed to reside.
According to documents obtained by the Merced Sun-Star, Johnson told a Merced police detective that her boyfriend, Jackson, had kept Sophia in a shed outside of the house and both physically and sexually abused her. The documents indicate that detectives found evidence of that abuse.
Johnson told police that she gave Jackson permission to “discipline” Sophia and took little to no action to stop his abuse because she feared him, according to the Sun-Star.
The newspaper further reported that Johnson told police that on Feb. 10, Jackson was in the bathroom with Sophia when Johnson heard a loud “thud.” Johnson reportedly did not see her daughter after that day and thought she had run away. Almost exactly a month later, when Merced police arrived at the home to look for Sophia, they found her body in a bathtub inside of a locked bathroom, according to the Sun-Star.
“What type of sick, twisted individual would keep a child in a shed,” said Melissa Harris, a cousin of Sophia. “I don’t have words for him (Jackson), but we do hope that law enforcement is able to find him quickly.”
The Merced County Coroner’s Office has not yet released Sophia’s cause of death, citing a pending autopsy and toxicology report.
Relatives of Sophia, including Harris, said they were shocked and heartbroken by her death but that they had long been concerned about her living under the care of Johnson.
For most of her life, Sophia was raised in Hayward by her aunt, Emerald Johnson, and her grandmother, although neither of them had formal custody of her, relatives told this news organization in interviews. Sophia’s mother, meanwhile, bounced around between homes, hotels and homeless shelters in the Bay Area and Southern California, they said.
In January 2021, however, Samantha Johnson removed Sophia from her grandmother’s home without any notice and began taking Sophia with her as she moved between the Bay Area and Southern California, according to Emerald Johnson.
Emerald Johnson filed an initial missing-person report with Hayward police in January 2021 after Johnson not only disappeared with Sophia but also changed her phone number so that family members could not reach her, according to a police report obtained by this news organization through a public records request.
In the January 2021 police report, Emerald Johnson told police that she was worried about Sophia’s well-being because Sophia had told her that “Samantha has hit or choked her in the past.” Emerald Johnson also told police that her sister frequently used liquor and drugs, including when taking care of Sophia, the report states.
After speaking with Emerald Johnson, police visited the last known location of Samantha Johnson and Sophia — a nearby La Quinta Inn — but they had already checked out. The responding police officer reached out to a CPS social worker who was involved with Sophia’s case and a mentor of Samantha Johnson, but neither of them had seen or spoken to the pair and did not have Samantha Johnson’s new phone number, the report states.
Sophia was absent from school for more than a month after Samantha Johnson disappeared with her in January, according to attendance records shared with this news organization by Sophia’s family. The Hayward Unified School District, where Sophia attended school, declined to comment.
In late February, Samantha Johnson returned to the Bay Area with Sophia. Shortly thereafter, Hayward police were requested to essentially supervise a meeting between Alameda County’s Child Welfare Services, Sophia and her mother and Emerald Johnson. The responding police officer was not required to write up a report about that meeting and no further actions were taken by police, according to Cassondra Fovel, a spokesperson for the Hayward Police Department.
Similarly, in October 2021, the county’s Child Welfare Services notified the Hayward Police Department that they had investigated another allegation of abuse and neglect of Sophia but the agency determined it to be unfounded, Fovel said.
“There was never a request (by Child Welfare Services) for police to help remove Sophia from her parent, Samantha Johnson,” she said in an interview.
Officials with Alameda County’s Child Welfare Services department have declined to comment on Sophia’s case.
Anyone who has information on Jackson’s whereabouts is asked to contact Merced Police Detective John Pinnegar at 209-388-7712.
Source: www.mercurynews.com