A California mother whose 10-year-old son was shot dead by another 10-year-old says the boy killed her son after losing a bicycle race.
Brittani Frierson told NBC News she gave her son Keith, also known as "KJ," permission to ride his bike — which he had begged for for Christmas — with friends.
She said not even 15 minutes later, he was dead, "all because he was enjoying a race with some other kids."
Frierson said she was alerted of what happened when neighbors began banging on her door and shouting that something had happened to her son. That's when she ran outside to see what happened.
"I screamed for hours after I saw my child on that ground, because I could just see that he had no chance," Frierson told NBC. "I just knew that my child was gone."
Frierson was basing the events of what happened on what she was told by a neighbor's child, who was among those riding bikes. She said her son had played with these children before.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said officers responded to the incident in Foothill Farms around 4:30 p.m. Saturday. Police said the shooter had grabbed a gun from his father's car and used it to shoot KJ before running into a nearby apartment.
KJ was found unresponsive and bleeding from his head and neck.
The suspect, who is a minor and has not been named, was taken to the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility and charged with murder. His father, 53-year-old Arkete Davis, was arrested and taken to the Sacramento County Main Jail. He was charged with several felony firearm offenses, along with child endangerment and accessory after the fact.
Detectives found the gun near a trash can, suggesting Davis tried to get rid of it. They confirmed Davis couldn't legally have a gun, and determined that the recovered firearm had been reported stolen in 2017.
Davis appeared in court for the first time Wednesday. Based on the evidence, a judge determined he is a danger to the public and decided to hold him without bail, according to local Sacramento station CBS13.
Frierson told CBS13 that she got a call from the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office saying that the boy who killed KJ is being released Thursday.
"If my heart wasn't already broken, the strength I had, it just crushed me," Frierson said. "She gets to get her baby tomorrow and hold him, hug him, and tell her baby it's OK. But when I went outside, my baby was gone. He had no chance."
Frierson described her son as generous, smart, friendly and helpful.
"There's nobody that met that boy that did not come back and tell me, to the side, like: 'Your son — you raised that boy good. He's such a good kid,'" she said to NBC.
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