Domestic Violence Dispute Ends with a Mother and Her 6-Year-Old Daughter Shot Dead and Two Other Chi

On any other Saturday children are doing chores, mom's are running errands and there's probably cartoons in the background. While that may have been true for many of us yesterday around the country, one St. Louis family was living a nightmare. Police were called to the 8800 block of Shannon Fox Circle at the Shannon Fox Apartments in Jennings, a suburb of St. Louis. A distraught child was reporting a disturbance. When police arrived they heard screaming and "followed the screaming" to a gruesome scene. A woman and her three children had been shot.

According to St. Louis County police, they found a woman dead at the scene. The 6-year-old had been shot multiple times. She was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead shortly after arriving. The 10-year-old suffered a graze wound, and the 16-year-old was shot in the shoulder; both girls are expected to recover, police said.

A 40-year-old man who lived at the apartment was taken into custody without incident, police said. He is believed to be the woman’s boyfriend. Two guns were recovered at the scene."

The suspect, Joseph Jones, who was the boyfriend of the adult victim, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder for killing Bernadetta Cooper, 40, and Doryan Bryant, 6. Jones has also been charged by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office with two counts of first-degree assault, four counts of armed criminal action and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm. He allegedly shot the victims with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol and a .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, the two guns found at the scene.

Jones is no stranger to the judicial system. Officers said that in 1999, Jones was convicted on possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking offense, a federal charge, and pleaded guilty in January 2019 to being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Jones is being held on $1 million cash-only bail. No motive has been given as to why he murdered this mother and her child.

There are no words that can express how sad this situation is. Our hearts go out to the family of the victims. We pray they receive comfort and justice.