A 12-year-old boy was shot and killed hours after leaving an anti-gun violence event for his slain cousin in Tennessee on Saturday.
JaJuan Latham (pictured top right) was killed hours after leaving an anti-violence event for his cousin, Tennessee high school football star Zaevian Dobson, 15, who died while shielding three girls from a drive-by shooting in December.
Zaevian was honored at the annual Bobby Maze Celebrity Basketball game on Saturday night. The game promoted a message of ending gun violence.
Zaevion’s mother, Zenobia Dobson, was in attendance at the game. The 15-year-old was mentioned by President Obama in his tearful speech on gun control in December.
After the game, about 150-200 people went to a party at Danny Mayfield Park in Knoxville.
JaJuan was shot in the back seat of his father’s Chevy Tahoe after two gunmen opened fire in the park at about 9:50 p.m. on Saturday.
“The first thing I do is reach my son and I just realize he’s not moving, so I’m like, ‘What’s going on, is he asleep?’” Hubert Latham told WATE. “When I picked him up, that’s when I realized, what I seen, blood.”
In a panic, Hubert drove his bullet-riddled SUV to the nearest hospital and carried JaJuan inside the emergency room. But the boy was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound to his head.
“It broke my heart 30 minutes later when they came out and told me my son was dead. The only thing that came to my mind was: who did this?” Hubert told reporters.
Police have no leads on the gunmen or the motive for the drive-by shooting.
“The Lathems and the Dobsons have now lost two children in a very short time,” said Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero at a press conference on Sunday.
“This has got to stop. This is the second innocent young person in our community that has had their life ended by senseless violence, by cowards,” Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch said at the press conference. “This can’t go on. We do not need to bury any more children.”
Black Lives Matter activists did not attend the tribute game or the press conference.
