GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — The last time anyone saw DeCorrius Jones, he was running into the woods behind the Sugarloaf Crossing Apartments in Lawrenceville, where he lived.
He was wearing only navy blue basketball shorts — no shirt, no shoes. He wasn't carrying a wallet, cell phone or keys.
It was Oct. 15, 2016, and Jones, 20, was allegedly high on acid. Callers to 911 reported that the aspiring chef had attacked his girlfriend and his mother in the apartment complex.
"In my mind, I'm like, this is stuff that I see on Lifetime," said his girlfriend, Deona Horton. "It would have been the last thing I would've expected from him. Just knowing him, and just knowing his personality, I knew it was drugs. It had to have been. And it took his mind, definitely.”
Now a podcast is looking back at the mysterious disappearance of Jones. “True Crime Chronicles,” a podcast by VAULT Studios, will dig into the last moments before he ran into the woods in an episode that will be released Monday.
You can download and subscribe to "True Crime Chronicles" on any podcast platform, including Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and Apple Podcasts. You also can listen to the latest episode in the player below when it is released on Monday.
Horton described Jones as kind and caring — a big “teddy bear.”
“We love him. We miss him. We want him to come home," added Jones' mother, Shacora Jones. "We're a real close-knit family. I understand that he's an adult and he has the right to go and come as he please, but he wouldn't go away from his family without talking with them for days and weeks and months at a time — not if he was in his right mind.”
The family hired a private investigator after DeCorrius Jones vanished.
“Could he be alive out there? He could be. There's no proof that he's dead and there's no proof that he's alive,” said private investigator Jane Holmes, of Patricia Lane Investigations.
His mom continues to hold out hope that he is alive.
“Do I think he's dead? No, I do not. I don't feel in no way, shape, form or fashion that he's dead. I just feel like he's somewhere not in his right mind, but I feel in time, he will get back to his right mind and he will come back home to us when he's more like himself," Shacora Jones said.
If you have any information about DeCorrius Jones’ whereabouts or what happened to him, contact the Gwinnett County Police Department at (770) 513-5302.
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