A young Atlanta boy is recovering after being shot while making TikTok videos with his siblings last week.
Javonni Carson was with his father, Jarvis Denton, his siblings Parise Wise, 14, and Jarvis Wise Jr., 11, when someone drove by “and shot into the crowd” on the evening of July 8, mom Keyona Carson told NBC News.
“My other two kids were there, too, and they saw everything,” Carson said. “I’m really at a loss for words and the fact that I wasn’t there to help makes it harder.
“He’s here, so that’s a blessing,” she continued. “He’s nine years old, taking shots. He didn’t deserve this.”
The nine-year-old was shot four times and underwent emergency surgery to have the bullets removed and repair a shattered femur, she added. He’s recovering at home now but is having trouble moving.
“My 11-year-old said he was trying to crawl over to (Javonni), but there were already so many people on the ground,” Carson, 35, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). “I didn’t know anything until I got to the hospital. I just knew he’d been shot.”
Carson told NBC her children who witnessed the shooting are getting counselling to help cope with the trauma.
Per NBC, a report by the Atlanta Police Department says gunfire erupted in a parking lot on Wednesday night and multiple cars were struck. Two other people, unrelated to Javonni, were also shot and survived.
No shooter has been identified, the report says, but 42 shell casings were recovered at the scene. Footage of the shooting was caught on a surveillance camera outside Gaja Korean Bar, the AJC reports.
A GoFundMe was set up under Javonni’s name to help pay for his medical bills during his recovery.
“My son Javonni is a honour roll student at Deerwood Academy, also a striving football player and rapper,” the fundraising page reads. “He is loved by many because his character and personality is so magnetic.”
So far, it’s raised more than US$12,000 of the $20,000 goal.
The shooting follows a violent Fourth of July weekend in Atlanta. A shooting on that Saturday left five people dead, including eight-year-old Secoriea Turner, after a group of armed men opened fire on her mother’s car.
No arrests have been made yet.
“I just thank God that (Javonni’s) still here,” Carson told the AJC in response to Turner’s death. “They don’t even have their baby anymore.”
“I can’t imagine.”
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