The Rev. Darryl Gray again denied allegations that his wife, St. Louis Personnel Director Sonya Jenkins-Gray, used a city car to try to catch him having an affair.
The claims were made previously by a lawyer representing the city in a civil service commission hearing to determine if his wife should be fired. Darryl Gray, a prominent justice advocate and chair of the city's jail oversight board, denied the allegation then and again during his testimony at the hearing on Monday.
She has also vehemently denied the allegation.
The hearing centers around a July 2024 trip in which Jenkins-Gray said she took a city vehicle to Jefferson City with a subordinate to pick up personal documents from her car. Darryl Gray testified Monday he was meeting with his ex-wife from Kansas City that day to sign papers concerning their child.
When asked if he was in Jefferson City as part of an affair with his ex-wife, he denied the allegation.
He said he saw Jenkins-Gray and the other city worker from a distance.
“I had no encounter,” Gray said. “She waved at me, and I waved at her.”
Gray’s testimony came a few hours after Mayor Tishaura Jones’ chief of staff, Jared Boyd, testified. When asked by Jenkins-Gray’s lawyer and the presiding hearing officer, retired Judge Edward Sweeny, to answer if anyone had told him that the director was there to try to catch her husband cheating, he said he had “inferred” that scenario through interviews, a subsequent investigation and the lack of details surrounding the trip.
The mayor’s deputy chief of staff, Sara Baker, also said the worker who drove Jenkins-Gray didn’t say the trip was to confront her husband cheating.
Jenkins-Gray repaid the city $170 for the trip to Jefferson City and said she didn’t know she was breaking city policy.
Jones selected Jenkins-Gray in 2022 to succeed Rick Frank, who left in 2021. But the city charter stipulates that there be a public hearing to determine whether the commission will recommend that the director can be fired.
Frank testified Monday that he was unaware of anyone being fired for violating the vehicle use policy during his time as director. He cited an incident about 10 years ago in which a high-level official was driving a city car drunk and got into a crash.
“No discipline occurred,” Frank said.
Lawyers representing the city have said Jenkins-Gray put her co-worker in a precarious position, arguing the trip amounts to malfeasance.
Jenkins-Gray’s lawyers have countered by saying the hearing is part of an attack against her and her husband for political differences, including Darryl Gray’s endorsement of Wesley Bell in the August congressional primary against Cori Bush, an ally of Jones.
Jenkins-Gray’s lawyers have also argued that her opposition to a Jones-backed proposal that would give the mayor more control over the personnel department also led to a fracture.
Gray said the hearing has been a burden on their family.
“I believe that politically, it's already a foregone conclusion that my wife is going to get fired anyway,” Gray said. “My wife is losing weight, the stress level on our family, financially and otherwise, only knowing that at the end, none of this is going to matter — that's hard.”
