PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 Loved ones of the 16-year-old found dead in a Phoenix park gathered for a candlelight vigil in her honor Friday night. <\/p>\n
Zariah Dodd was around five months pregnant<\/a> when she was found shot to death in Marivue Park in Phoenix, where the vigil was held hours after police announced the arrests of two men now charged with first-degree murder.<\/p>\n Those in attendance brought balloons and wore T-shirts with the girl\u2019s photo to honor her and the unborn baby she planned to name Zaloni.<\/p>\n The organizer, Richilyn Fox, said she used to manage one of the group homes Zariah lived in. After leaving the job, Fox said her family took in Zariah as a kinship caregiver, but Zariah was sent back to a group home setting because she would run away. Fox said Zariah was troubled, but a joy to be around.<\/p>\n \u201cFunny, smart, intelligent, resilient, powerful.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter what was thrown at her, she kept forward.\u00a0 She never looked back,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n Police identified the two men charged in her murder as 36-year-old Jurrell Davis, who they said is also the father of her unborn child, and 18-year-old Jechri James Gillett. Davis is also facing sexual misconduct with a minor. <\/p>\n \u201cThey felt it necessary to take this 16-year-old\u2019s life who had an unborn child,\u201d said Phoenix Police Sgt. Rob Scherer. \u201cTo be able to rationalize that being okay and then actually putting a plan together and executing that plan, it\u2019s imperative that people like this are off the street.\u201d<\/p>\n Loved ones and advocates have a lot of questions about why she was able to go for a walk alone when staff at the Surprise group home she lived in knew she was pregnant and had a history of running away. <\/p>\n They said she wasn\u2019t reported missing until midnight on July 5. Her body was discovered by a passerby walking their dog just hours later.<\/p>\n \u201cSo even making the report at 12 o\u2019clock, but the curfew was 10 o\u2019clock. There\u2019s a gap. The missing person report should\u2019ve been no less than 10:15 p.m. because she was missing by then,\u201d said Fox.<\/p>\n Zariah Dodd was around five months pregnant when she was found shot to death in Marivue Park in Phoenix. Two men are now charged with first-degree murder.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, police were surveilling the 36-year-old Davis, and they spotted him in a car with another runaway girl, a 17-year-old who had been reported missing two months earlier. <\/p>\n Police arrested Davis on an unrelated weapons charge, and he\u2019s been in jail since. Court documents also showed he was convicted of felony child abuse in 2008.<\/p>\n Davis and Gillett are held on a $1 million bond.<\/p>\n See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n