Before 6-year-old Jordan Walker was stabbed to death, his grandfather had begged for custody, warning Santa Clara County social workers that the two-bedroom apartment where the San Jose boy lived with a cast of nefarious relatives with criminal backgrounds coming and going was dangerous.
But those red flags were either ignored or mishandled, grandfather Morian Walker Sr. said. Now as one of the boy’s uncles sits in jail on murder charges in the killings of Jordan and Jordan’s great-grandmother a year ago, Walker Sr. is suing Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency, Washington Elementary School in San Jose and others, claiming they didn’t do enough to keep Jordan safe.
“I talked to several people at Child Protective Services, to social workers,” Walker said in a phone interview. “I asked them to do criminal background histories on everyone that’s living there. I asked them to check the police reports, to see the police blotter at that location. It all fell on deaf ears.”
Walker’s lawsuit filed Sept. 13 in Santa Clara County Superior Court is the latest complaint against the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, which has been making efforts to reform the agency after the Bay Area News Group investigated the death last year of baby Phoenix Castro, who was sent home with her drug-abusing father over objections from social workers. This news organization also exposed the county’s operation of a string of illegal group homes, called scattered sites, and highlighted two state reports that have been highly critical of the county’s child welfare agency.
The lawsuit hasn’t been served yet, and the county had no comment except to say that “the murder of this child and his great-grandmother is a heartbreaking and shocking tragedy.” The school district also had no comment.
The lawsuit also challenges a guiding principle of Damion Wright, the director of the county’s child welfare agency who is named in the lawsuit: that children always do best with their families. In this case, at least, despite intervention and support from his agency, Jordan was placed with the wrong relatives.
As the lawsuit makes clear, Jordan’s brief life was chaotic and insecure. His mother, Danielle Walker Marshman, had a history of drug problems and allegations of neglect. In August 2022, a social worker came to her home amid reports that adults there were selling fentanyl and leaving drug paraphernalia around the house. When Jordan’s mother refused a drug test and social workers didn’t see any signs of drugs, the case was considered “unfounded” and closed, the lawsuit says.
Two months later, social workers responded to reports that Jordan’s mother and stepfather were smoking fentanyl, and Jordan was left alone for hours and had to “scrounge” for food. The case was closed because “social workers said they were unable to make contact with the family,” the lawsuit said.
Not until February 2023 was Jordan removed from his mother’s care — six months before he was killed — when he took a bag of methamphetamines to school and told his teacher that his mother had given it to him. The lawsuit accuses Washington Elementary of sending Jordan home that day with his mother and, in prior instances, failing to report her neglectful care of him.
Even so, the incident with the bag of methamphetamine triggered prosecutors to charge Jordan’s mother with child endangerment. That’s when county social workers sent Jordan to live with Delphina Turner, his 71-year-old maternal great-grandmother.
“The apartment was described as an endless revolving door of different drug users and homeless people — both short term and long term visitors,” the lawsuit said.
Those coming and going through Turner’s apartment while Jordan was assigned to live there, the lawsuit says, were a convicted rapist, a felon who spent 20 years in prison, at least two drug addicts, and Jordan’s uncle, Nathan Addison, who had drug and mental health issues and a prison record and is charged with Jordan’s murder.
At one point, it appears that a social worker flagged the family problems, writing in an “investigation narrative” that “the generational history of substance use, mental health, and criminal history indicate a risk for the family environment the child is exposed to.”
Walker, who filed the lawsuit, “was upset and appalled that his grandson was being placed in Turner’s home after social workers were told that he wanted the boy, had a stable environment for Jordan to live in and Jordan loved his grandfather and wanted nothing more,” the lawsuit said. Turner was once Walker’s mother-in-law.
Walker, 59, retired after a military career, says he purchased all of his grandson’s clothes and toys over the years in an effort to help his daughter who was struggling. In the lawsuit, Walker was characterized as “stable and had no drug or criminal history.”
Even though Walker “adamantly expressed” to social workers “the unsafe living conditions and the number of convicted felons and drug addicts living with Mrs. Turner,” Jordan was allowed to remain at the apartment of his great-grandmother. Turner had a long-term job at NASA, but Walker says she enabled her younger, drug-abusing, dependent relatives.
At one point, a social worker told a family member that “social workers knew there were dangerous people going in and out of Ms. Turner’s house, including Nathan Addison” and warned Turner that only she and Jordan were allowed in the home, the lawsuit says.
“Social Services did nothing to ensure the warning was adhered to,” the lawsuit says, “and in fact, knew it was not.”
The great-grandmother also promised that she would supervise all visits between Jordan and his mother, who had not been attending drug classes as agreed, the lawsuit said. When a social worker visited the mother’s home in June 2023 and found Jordan with her unsupervised — and the mother refusing a drug test — she called for the court to terminate parental rights. And that’s how — just weeks before the killing — Jordan was sent to live again with his great-grandmother in the two-bedroom apartment.
By that time, Addison had been released from prison and was back living in the apartment, the lawsuit said.
Walker says he was told by relatives that Turner had been giving money to Addison, and he may have become enraged when she cut him off, which led to the stabbing. Prosecutors wouldn’t immediately comment on a motive.
Walker broke down with emotion as he remembered his grandson’s short life, how he liked to swim and ride his skateboard. He was funny.
“I love him and I miss him,” Walker said. “And with every day that goes by, I won’t stop fighting for justice for Jordan and bringing to light the travesty that Santa Clara County Family and Children’s Services and everybody involved have let Jordan down.”
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