The slim 15-year-old, who on March 18, 1988, bolted from two drug enforcers who had taken him and Cornell Williams to an isolated road to kill them, was charged during the weekend with murdering a Bucks County man near a drug corner in North Philadelphia.
The arrest stunned those in Philadelphia's law enforcement community who had grown close to Jones during the much-publicized Williams case and who had tried to tell the youngster that fate had a reason for sparing him.
"I'm just sitting here berating myself for all the things I didn't do," Assistant District Attorney Joseph McGettigan, who prosecuted the Williams killings, said yesterday.
"The one thing I didn't do was to show him the pictures of what Cornell looked like when he was killed," McGettigan said. "Maybe I should have."
Police said Jones - who seldom spoke to his family or acquaintances about the Williams killings - had been charged with the slaying of Eric Kitchen, 24, of Newtown.
The killing reportedly happened about 1 a.m. Saturday when Kitchen and several friends drove a pickup truck to Fourth and Diamond Streets in North Philadelphia to buy drugs, police said.
The men in the truck asked for a "40," a $40 bag of powdered cocaine, according to a man interviewed yesterday in Jones' house who identified
himself as the youth's cousin. He declined to give his name.
Jones, who was with several others, gave the men a plastic bag that contained only baking soda, according to the cousin, who said he was there.
Apparently detecting the ruse, the men in the truck refused to pay, and one of the men seemed to be reaching for something on the floor of the truck, the cousin said. Jones then pulled a gun and fired a shot, according to police sources. They said Jones has admitted firing the gun. Police recovered a .22- caliber handgun, which they believe is the murder weapon, from a nearby back yard.
