Jonathon Jones was 17 when Jadun Byrd was killed and was later certified for prosecution as an adult in St. Louis.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Jonathon Xavier Jones was 17 when 19-year-old Jadun Byrd was shot to death in 2022. Jones is now 21, has two second-degree murder convictions and has been sentenced to life in prison in the case that began while he was still a juvenile.
The Aug. 7 sentence followed a legal path shaped in part by Jones’ age at the time of Byrd’s death. Because he was a minor when the shooting occurred, the case initially fell within the juvenile system rather than proceeding immediately as an ordinary adult murder prosecution. Jones was certified to stand trial as an adult on July 8, 2024. He later reached an agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Circuit Judge Craig K. Higgins imposed the life sentence, which Law&Crime reported carries the possibility of parole. Additional weapon-related charges were dismissed under the plea agreement.
By the time Jones was certified as an adult in the Byrd case, he was already moving toward trial in another homicide prosecution. That earlier case involved the Sept. 6, 2021, killing of 29-year-old Brandon Scott after what prosecutors described as a traffic dispute in downtown St. Louis. Scott was shot multiple times while in his vehicle near Washington Avenue and North Second Street. Jones and co-defendant Mark Perry were found guilty in July 2024 of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. Jones was sentenced that September to 15 years for murder and seven years and six months for armed criminal action, with the terms to run consecutively.
The two cases overlapped in another important way. Prosecutors said Jones escaped from the city’s juvenile detention center in November 2021 while he was being held in connection with the Scott homicide. Byrd was killed several months later, on March 2, 2022. Jones’ status as a juvenile at that time meant authorities eventually had to obtain certification before prosecuting him as an adult for Byrd’s death. The result was a criminal history in which conduct alleged to have occurred before Jones turned 18 ultimately produced adult convictions and decades of incarceration, including the new life sentence.
The Byrd case itself began with what had been an ordinary trip to meet a parent. Prosecutors said Byrd took a Lyft to meet his mother at work and spoke to her on FaceTime as he traveled. When he walked through a parking lot in the 2400 block of Whittier Street in The Ville neighborhood, an eyewitness saw a white Dodge Journey approach. The vehicle’s driver-side windows lowered, according to the witness account released by prosecutors, and multiple shots were fired. Byrd’s mother, Leslie Byrd, heard the gunfire through the phone and saw her son fall during the video call.
Police responding to the shooting found Byrd suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He later died. Leslie Byrd described the call in earlier public reporting, saying the phone remained connected after her son went down and that its position gave her only a partial view of him and the people nearby. She also said nothing was taken from Byrd. No confirmed motive is stated in the sentencing materials released by the Circuit Attorney’s Office, and authorities have not publicly identified robbery as an explanation for the attack. The central legal question eventually became whether investigators could connect Jones to the people who arrived in the Dodge Journey.
Prosecutors said surveillance footage provided a substantial part of that connection. Cameras showed a white Dodge Journey circling the area where Byrd lived and then following the Lyft carrying him, according to the Circuit Attorney’s Office. Other recordings showed Jones getting into the Journey around 30 minutes before the killing and returning in it around 30 minutes afterward. Investigators found Jones’ fingerprints on the driver’s side of the SUV. Two people who were in the Journey at the time of the shooting later identified Jones as the driver and said he was one of the shooters, prosecutors said.
The investigation did not end with the vehicle. Police later executed a search warrant at a residence where Jones was found and recovered several firearms. Prosecutors said forensic testing tied one of those guns to Byrd’s killing. Investigators also examined Jones’ cellphone activity and said the phone was switched to airplane mode shortly before the homicide and switched out of that mode shortly afterward. Those details gave prosecutors evidence from several independent categories rather than one identification alone: video, fingerprints, witness statements, firearms testing and digital records all became part of the case described publicly by authorities.
The adult-certification decision in 2024 allowed prosecutors to bring that evidence into circuit court, but a trial never became necessary. Jones pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a negotiated resolution. A guilty plea meant the state did not have to present the full case to jurors, and Jones did not receive a jury verdict in Byrd’s death. The resulting conviction therefore differs procedurally from the Scott case, where a jury heard evidence and returned guilty verdicts against Jones and Perry. In both cases, however, Jones was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.
The disposition also changed the charge structure in the Byrd case. Earlier proceedings had included multiple counts, while the agreement that produced Jones’ life sentence centered on second-degree murder. Law&Crime reported that armed criminal action and unlawful use of a weapon charges were dismissed as part of the plea deal. The available public court reporting does not describe the full negotiations or state why prosecutors and the defense settled on those terms. What is clear is that Higgins accepted the murder plea and imposed life imprisonment on Aug. 7.
Jones’ sentencing illustrates how the legal consequences of crimes committed by minors can unfold long after the underlying events. The shooting took place in March 2022, but adult certification did not occur until July 2024. The Scott prosecution reached its verdict that same month, and Jones received his sentence in that case in September 2024. The Byrd charge then remained unresolved for almost two more years. By the time Higgins sentenced Jones in August 2026, the defendant who had been 17 at the time of the killing was 21 and already had another murder conviction.
The passage of time did not lessen what prosecutors described as the lasting consequences for Byrd’s family. Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore said after the sentencing that Byrd had been 19 with his life ahead of him and that his relatives would continue carrying the pain of his death. Byrd’s mother had been connected to him in real time when he was shot, a circumstance that remained central to public accounts of the case from the investigation through sentencing. The prosecution’s evidence, however, ultimately extended far beyond the call she witnessed and included records and physical evidence used to trace the attack back to Jones.
Jones now faces the life sentence imposed for Byrd’s murder while also carrying the consecutive 22 1/2-year sentence arising from Scott’s death. The publicly available sentencing materials reviewed for the Byrd case do not spell out every detail of how those terms will operate together or provide a specific parole date. The Aug. 7 judgment nevertheless marks the final trial-court disposition of a homicide case that began when both the victim and the defendant were teenagers and that continued through juvenile proceedings, adult certification, a guilty plea and sentencing over more than four years.
Author note: Last updated September 21, 2026.