DETROIT (AP) — A man who dropped a Detroit-area teenager’s body in a dumpster “left behind a trail of digital evidence” implicating him in her death, despite a fruitless, extraordinary search to find the remains in a landfill, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
Jaylin Brazier, 25, is on trial for second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Zion Foster, whose body hasn't been found.
Detroit police in 2022 raked through tons of rotting trash at a suburban landfill to try to find any trace, a rare step by a law enforcement agency. The search, sometimes in 90-degree heat and humidity, was called off after five months.
“Was she choked? Was she raped? Did she die somehow of some inexplicable natural cause?” assistant prosecutor Ryan Elsey said in his opening remarks to a jury. “The search for Zion’s body became paramount to the investigation.”
Brazier and Foster were cousins. He has denied killing her and insists Foster suddenly died while they were using marijuana at his Detroit home.
Brazier told police that he panicked, stashed the body in a car trunk and drove it to a dumpster after midnight, disclosures that led to the landfill search, according to investigators.
Defense attorney Brian Brown said it's a case of “fear and bad decisions."
“Jaylin was scared,” Brown said. “He might have not made the right decision, but at the end of the day that does not make him a murderer."
Elsey told jurors that experts would rule out the possibility of a marijuana-related death. He said Brazier “left behind a trail of digital evidence that is damning.”
Brazier searched the internet for information about whether garbage trucks crush trash and the possibility of criminal charges when a body can't be found, the prosecutor said.
While in prison for lying to police, Brazier told a girlfriend “there was nothing to worry about,” Elsey said. “He was wrong. You don't get away with murder just by getting rid of the body.”
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Defense attorney Brian Brown, left, dressed a tie on his client murder suspect Jaylin Brazier before the start of jury selection for his 2nd-degree murder trial in the death of his cousin Zion Foster at Frank Murphy Hall of Justice on Monday, May 6, 2024, in Detroit. (Clarence Tabb Jr./Detroit News via AP)
Defendant Jaylin Brazier, left, and his attorney, Brian Brown, right, listen as Asst. Wayne County Prosecutor Ryan Elsey questions prospective jurors during the jury selection for his murder trial in the death of his cousin Zion Foster at Frank Murphy Hall of Justice on Monday, May 6, 2024, in Detroit. (Clarence Tabb Jr./Detroit News via AP)
FILE - Garbage is unloaded into the Pine Tree Acres Landfill in Lenox Township, Mich., July 28, 2022. Trial is underway in Detroit in the death of a 17-year-old girl whose disappearance led to a monthslong search through tons of rotting trash. Jaylin Brazier is charged with second-degree murder in the death of teenager, Zion Foster, whose remains haven’t been found. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, Iranian state media reported, without immediately elaborating.
Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Traveling with Raisi were Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran's East Azerbaijan province and other officials, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. One local government official used the word “crash” to describe the incident, but he acknowledged to an Iranian newspaper that he had yet to reach the site himself.
Neither IRNA nor state TV offered any information on Raisi’s condition.
Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, state TV said, but had been hampered by poor weather conditions. There had been heavy rain and fog reported with some wind. IRNA called the area a "forest."
Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third one that the two nations built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan's Embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan's diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran's Shiite theocracy views as its main enemy in the region.
Iran flies a variety of helicopters in the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet also largely dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Raisi, 63, is a hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary. He is viewed as a protégé of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after his death or resignation from the role.
Raisi won Iran's 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Raisi is sanctioned by the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections. Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launched a massive drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also has continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast, like Yemen's Houthi rebels and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
FILE- Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi places his hands on his heart as a gesture of respect to the crowd during the funeral ceremony of the victims of Wednesday's bomb explosion in the city of Kerman about 510 miles (820 kms) southeast of the capital Tehran, Iran, Jan. 5, 2024. A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, May 19, 2024, Iranian state television reported, without immediately elaborating. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
