MONTEGO BAY, St James — More than two years after the shocking murder of autistic nine-year-old Gabrielle King the investigation drags on as cops comb through his mother’s phone.

According to head of the Area One Police Division, Assistant Commissioner of Police Clifford Chambers, the police are still scrutinising the iPhone Amoi Leon Issa had at the time of Gabrielle’s death.

“Analysis is still being done on the phone,” Chambers told the Jamaica Observer last week when contacted for an update on the King case.

In November 2023 the Supreme Court ordered Leon Issa to hand over her phone’s passkey to investigators probing the case. The ruling followed months of legal wrangling between her attorneys and the police over access to the device. Leon Issa had contended that her right to privacy was being breached.

On January 13, 2022 it was reported that young Gabrielle had been kidnapped along the Tucker main road in Montego Bay, St James. The child was later found dead in his mother’s vehicle, which was abandoned off the Fairfield main road in the parish.

At the time Leon Issa told investigators that armed men had hijacked her vehicle as she navigated a pothole along the road and sped off with her child. News of the vulnerable young boy’s death sent shock waves throughout the country and in the years since his murder there have been concerns about the pace of the investigation.