Police said a 14-year-old was arrested on a murder charge after Cameron Coney was shot inside his southeast Atlanta home.
ATLANTA, Ga. — A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder after a 12-year-old boy was shot inside a southeast Atlanta home, police said, turning a weekend gathering of children into a homicide case that has shaken relatives and neighbors.
Atlanta police said officers were sent to a home on Lathrop Street SE at about 1:49 p.m. on Saturday, April 11, where they found Cameron Coney with a gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and later died. By the next morning, homicide detectives had secured a murder warrant for another juvenile, who was taken to the Metro Youth Detention Center. Family members have said the boys were friends, but police have not publicly described their relationship or said what led the gun to fire.
Police said the shooting happened inside the residence, and family members said Cameron was in his bedroom when he was shot. By Sunday evening, grief had spilled into Thomasville Park, where relatives and friends gathered for a candlelight vigil, released balloons and tried to make sense of what had happened less than 24 hours earlier. “He was everything,” Cameron’s aunt, Latosha Coney, said during the memorial. Police have not identified the 14-year-old because of his age, and officials have not released a fuller account of who was in the room at the exact moment the gun fired. What is known is that officers first treated the case as a critical-injury shooting and that it quickly became a homicide investigation after Cameron died at the hospital.
Family members told local television stations that several children had gathered at the house and that one of them brought a gun inside. They said they were told the weapon was pointed at more than one child before Cameron was shot at close range. Those accounts have added to the family’s pain and also raised the central unanswered question in the case: whether the shot was fired intentionally or during reckless handling of the weapon. Police have not publicly answered that question. In its public statement, the Atlanta Police Department said only that investigators were questioning the juvenile and adults who were inside the home and that the investigation remained active. Authorities also have not publicly explained who owned the gun, how it got into the house, whether it was loaded before the children began handling it or whether any adult saw the weapon before the shooting.
As relatives mourned, they also tried to hold on to a picture of Cameron that was larger than the way he died. Family members said he was known as “Big Cam,” loved football and was the kind of child who kept people laughing. An Atlanta Public Schools spokesperson confirmed he attended Long Middle School and said grief counselors would be available on campus. In an online fundraiser, relatives described him as a playful boy who was deeply loved by his mother, one brother and two sisters. They said the shooting struck them with particular force because it happened in his own room, a place they believed should have been safest for him. The home sits in a residential stretch off McDonough Boulevard near the Thomasville Recreation Center, an ordinary setting that only sharpened the shock felt by those who knew the family and those who lived nearby.
The legal case remains at an early stage. Police said the 14-year-old was charged with murder on Sunday, April 12, one day after the shooting, and was transferred to the Metro Youth Detention Center without incident. Because the suspect is a juvenile, officials have not released his name, and court records have not yet provided the kind of public detail that often comes with adult prosecutions. Police also have not announced a next court date. It was not immediately clear Monday whether prosecutors would seek to move the case into adult court or whether any additional charges could be brought against anyone else who was in the home. Investigators have said adults were present at the location, but they have not said whether those adults face criminal scrutiny or whether they knew a gun was being handled by children before Cameron was shot.
The killing has landed during a period of intense concern over youth gun violence in Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that other recent shootings involving young victims have added pressure on city leaders and police as they try to respond to cases involving children and teenagers. Still, Cameron’s relatives kept the focus on the boy they lost. His aunt Destiny Coney described him as the kind of child who could lift a room with his personality. “He was goofy, funny,” she said. Another aunt said the arrest did little to soften the family’s grief and that what they wanted most now was accountability. “We hope that we get justice for Cameron,” Latosha Coney said. Those remarks, offered between tears at the vigil, gave the case a human center that went beyond the sparse language of charging documents and police statements.
Family members also said they wanted Cameron’s name remembered for who he was, not only for the violence that ended his life. At the park vigil, mourners stood in clusters as children and adults watched balloons rise into the night sky. Some hugged in silence. Others spoke in short bursts about the speed with which a normal Saturday had become a funeral plan. The family’s fundraiser said Cameron had a gift for joking and making people smile, a detail repeated by relatives as they spoke to reporters. That portrait of a playful middle-school student stood in painful contrast to the facts now under investigation: a gun inside a home, children gathered in a bedroom and a boy who never made it back out. For many gathered there, the murder charge answered only one question. It did not explain why Cameron was killed or how the danger was allowed so close to him.
As of Monday, the 14-year-old remained in juvenile custody, police said, and the homicide investigation was still open. Authorities have not released a detailed account of the shooting or announced the next hearing, leaving Cameron’s family waiting for both burial arrangements and the next formal step in court.