Murder charge filed in 17-year-old girl’s death after monthslong landfill search near Detroit

Prosecutors filed a murder charge Tuesday in the death of a teenager whose remains have not been found despite an extraordinary monthslong search last year at a suburban Detroit landfill.

More than a dozen Detroit police officers wearing protective suits, respirators and goggles picked through tons of rotting summer trash for any trace of 17-year-old Zion Foster, a search that was finally halted in October. On Tuesday, Zion’s cousin, Jaylin Brazier, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

Brazier served a brief prison sentence last year after admitting he had lied to police during the investigation.

James Royster, Zion’s father, told CBS Detroit it has been extremely painful for him during this nearly year and a half long investigation. 

“Every day knowing that the person who murdered my child is waking free, like it’s ok. And like it was alright that it happened. And the fact that honestly, I did nothing about that,” he said. “I felt as a failure as a father, as a person, as a man, every day of my life.”

Brazier, 24, has publicly said that Zion, who lived in Eastpointe, suddenly became unconscious while they were smoking marijuana at a Detroit house in January 2022. But he denied having any role in her death.

“There is a compelling body of evidence” against Brazier, assistant prosecutor Ryan Elsey said in requesting that he be returned to jail without bond.

Zion “walked into his house late at night and she came out dead,” Elsey said. “She was put in the trunk of his car, and he disposed of her body in a dumpster. … This idea that this is just some innocent person standing here is not going to be beared out by the facts.”

Police said Zion’s body was placed in a trash bin. The contents eventually were transported to Pine Tree Acres landfill in Macomb County.

Defense attorney Tim Doty disputed that a homicide occurred and urged a magistrate to release Brazier with an electronic tether.

“He is not a threat to anybody,” Doty said.

Brazier, however, was returned to jail without bond.

“It is unbearable,” Foster’s mother Ciera Milton told CBS Detroit in January. “How am I supposed to function on this? You know, yes people keep telling me you have other children and you know you gotta live for them and all that other kind of stuff, but no one that I know has ever been through this.”