Latria Johnson and Lindsey William Memphis parents indicted after 13 year old son found gun at home and accidentally shot 9 year old cousin, Xavier Jackson dead.
The parents of a 13-year-old Memphis boy who fatally shot his younger cousin while playing with his father’s loaded gun have been charged in the nine-year-old’s death.
Latria Johnson, 28, and her boyfriend Lindsey Williams, 27, have been indicted on criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment charges, the Shelby County district attorney’s office announced in a news release.
Investigators said the two boys were left alone at the Canterbury Woods Apartments on Gallan Drive in the Memphis suburb of Cordova just after 5.30pm on March 13, while their mothers went shopping.
The older boy, who was not named, picked up his father’s loaded .40 caliber handgun in the master bedroom and ‘accidentally’ pulled the trigger, according to investigators.
Xavier Jackson was killed when a bullet struck him in the face, authorities said. The boy would have turned 10 in April.
Boyfriend kept gun by window sill
The gun had been left unsecured where the children had access to it, authorities said, according to WMC Action News 5.
Williams told police he routinely kept the loaded gun near a window sill and his son knew where he stored it, according to a police affidavit.
Officials charged the teen boy with negligent homicide fox13memphis reported in March.
The teen boy’s father was also charged with resisting official detention after he tried to push his way past police and into the house.
The couple are out of jail on their own recognizance. Their lawyer, John Keith Perry, said the boys’ mothers left the children alone in the apartment for less than an hour as they went to go buy lunch.
‘It’s a horrible accident that can happen even with the best intended people,’ Perry said in a phone interview.
