Wife doesn't believe husband killed her son
The wife of an Atlantic City man who was arrested by U.S. marshals this week on murder charges said Wednesday that she does not believe he killed her 2-year-old son from a previous relationship.
The wife of an Atlantic City man who was arrested by U.S. marshals this week on murder charges said Wednesday that she does not believe he killed her 2-year-old son from a previous relationship.
Tiffany Jost, 23, said her son, Vernon Gaylord Sylver Jr., fell onto a concrete surface from a three-foot stack of bricks he was climbing, causing injuries that led to his death several days later. She said authorities are trying to suggest that her husband, Jagger Thomas Jost, 21, punched Vernon.
"They want somebody to go down for something even though they have no evidence," said Tiffany Jost. "They have none."
The Jost family was living in Greensboro, N.C., when Vernon died on May 16, 2015. A medical examiner ruled that he died from complications of blunt-force trauma to the abdomen.
Greensboro Police Detective Ben Mitchell said Wednesday that he and the local medical examiner worked closely to reach a conclusion.
"We've had multiple conversations about possibilities and scenarios," Mitchell said. As for Tiffany Jost's belief that Vernon's death was an accident, he said, "that is her right to believe what she wants to believe, or what she thinks happened to her child."
On Monday afternoon, U.S. marshals arrested Jagger Jost at the home of Tiffany Jost's sister in the 500 block of Absecon Boulevard in Atlantic City. He was taken to the Atlantic County Jail, where he is being held without bail.
Authorities are expected to extradite him to North Carolina to face charges of first-degree murder and felony child abuse.
Tiffany Jost, a chef, said that her husband typically watched Vernon while she was away at work, and that he told her Vernon had landed on his stomach after falling off bricks outside the family home on May 13.
In the two days that followed, Tiffany Jost said, Vernon seemed tired and did not play with his hamster, Finn, which he had named after a character in one of his favorite cartoons, Adventure Time.
On May 15, she said, her son began vomiting. She and Jagger Jost called 911, and an ambulance brought Vernon to Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro. He was pronounced dead early the next day, Tiffany Jost said.
Tiffany Jost said that had she believed Jagger was responsible, "I would have killed him myself."
She said she and Jagger Jost, who were engaged at the time, decided to marry on May 22, six days after Vernon's death, because she was too upset to have the large ceremonial wedding they had planned for later.
She said she and Jagger Jost had moved from Atlantic City to North Carolina in 2014 to save money and get a house. They returned to South Jersey, where both are from, to be closer to family after Vernon's death, she said.
Vernon was born on Nov. 21, 2012, in Philadelphia, where his father, Vernon Ward II, lived. Ward could not be reached.
Tiffany Jost said her son loved cartoons and was a curious baby. He liked to watch her and Jagger Jost cook, despite the small size of their kitchen, she said.
At Vernon's funeral on May 31, 2015, at the Goldie Hargett Memorial Chapel in Greensboro, Tiffany Jost said, Jagger Jost leaned over the casket and cried.
She said he cooperated with detectives during their investigation. She doesn't want Jagger, she said, to sit behind bars for something she believes he did not do.
"I feel like my heart is on fire," she said, "because I'm not going to let my husband rot in jail."
Mitchell, the Greensboro detective, declined to discuss details of the investigation, because it involves the death of a child.
"It's a sensitive case," he said.
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