COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina toddler and his mother visited a Lexington consignment store weeks after the boy was reported missing, the storeowner testified Thursday.
“I asked them what they were doing for the holidays,” Laura Beaver said of her interaction with Zinah Jennings and her son, Amir. “He was a wonderful baby.”
Beaver testified that the pair came into her shop just a day or two before Christmas Eve, nearly a month after Nov. 28, 2011, when authorities have said the then-18-month-old boy was last seen. That day, Amir and his mother were captured on surveillance video during a visit to a Columbia bank.
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Jennings is on trial this week on a charge of unlawful conduct toward a child. Authorities say she told them false, misleading stories about where the boy was, and she has been jailed since December.
Beaver said that Amir sat in a chair near the front of her store so that she could watch him while his mother shopped. Beaver, a former Columbia police officer, said that her surveillance equipment wasn’t recording, so there was no video of the visit.
Prosecutors pressed Beaver on cross examination, questioning her motives and asking why she remembered the visit so vividly. The shop owner said she had never called to try to claim the $10,000 reward being offered for information leading to Amir, saying she just wanted to help find him.
“It isn’t about the money,” she said. “It’s about the child.”
A police investigator testified that he didn’t find Beaver’s story credible. Another officer described chasing down a false tip that Amir had been sighted in Abbeville.
Jennings’ attorneys rested their case Thursday, and closing arguments were expected later in the day. Jennings spoke in court for the first time during her trial Thursday, answering routine questions from the judge about whether she wanted to testify in her own defense. She said she did not.
Jennings faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Her mother testified Wednesday that she never felt Jennings would harm her son.
Last week, a witness for the prosecution said that Jennings was overwhelmed with the stress of parenting and had pondered selling or giving away the boy.
