Mother Who Sparked a Frantic Search for Her Missing Toddler Arrested, Along with the Child's Father, After Their Son Was Found in a Dumpster.

A young Nevada couple have been arrested and jailed in connection with the death of their two-year-old son.

Law & Crime says that last week Diaja M. Smith, 23, frantically called authorities and reported her little boy missing. On June 6, 2024 Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers responded to a call at about 8:25 p.m. requesting them to report to a home in the 400 block of South 15th Street in regard to a missing child. The child's family say that he was last seen around 7:45 p.m.

At about 12:58 a.m. on Friday, June 7, authorities located the body of a small child, believed to be the missing boy, “inside of a garbage dumpster” in the 1300 block of Lewis Avenue. Medical personnel pronounced the child dead on the scene.

Smith and Jacoby Robinson, the child's father, were both arrested in connection to the child's death. The child, identified by missing posters in the neighborhood, was identified as Jacoby Robinson Jr.

“The LVMPD Homicide Section was notified and took over the investigation,” the department said in the release. “Through the course of the investigation, detectives determined that the two-year-old’s mother, Smith was the suspect in the case. Smith was arrested and is currently in the process of being booked into the Clark County Detention Center for open murder and other felony charges.”

Authorities said that the child's body was almost entirely covered with signs of trauma and other “very concerning injuries,” including a “pattern of abrasions in his genital area consisting of banding from rubber bands that officers saw in the home.”

A witness who lives in the area claimed to have seen Smith near the dumpster the day Robinson Jr. was reported missing. “I saw a lady sitting there with her two other kids, really hysterical saying ‘somebody took my kid, somebody took my kid,’” Kelvyn Barnett, who lives in the 1300 block of Lewis Avenue, told the station. “To find out that she was the one that did this is the most shocking aspect of it all.”

Smith and Robinson are both being held in the Clark County Detention Center without bond. They are scheduled to appear in court again on Tuesday.