Trey Wright was over the moon for his new girlfriend, a cheerleader he’d been dating going into summer break from school, according to his mom. But after an apparent fight, she allegedly set him up to die, then visited the hospital before his family knew what happened. 

Two days after the excited South Carolina 16-year-old told family that dating her “felt like a dream come true,” it became a nightmare. Authorities allege that she set him up to be shot and killed by another teen three years his senior.

“They knew each other, far as I know, no longer than two months,” his 35-year-old single mother, Ashley Lindsey, told Fox News Digital.

Gianna Kistenmacher, 17, is being charged as an adult after authorities say she brought Devan Raper, 19, to Wright’s location, knowing he was armed, angry and allegedly willing to shoot.

Wright played football and baseball and had been working at a local deer processor since he was 13, his mom told Fox News Digital. His bosses treated him like family, and she never missed a ballgame.

Beachgoers near the Myrtle Beach pier in South Carolina in a file photo. Nine local teens have been charged in connection with the shooting death of a 16-year-old from nearby Johnsonville, including his girlfriend. (iStock)

He had only gotten into football in eighth grade, but he picked it up quick – running for two touchdowns in his first game. He would have played up next year, she said.

In general, he was a pleasant and positive young man, she said.

“He didn’t too much care for school, but he still went every day with a smile on his face, because he was a morning person,” she said. “He used to wake up singing, take 30 minutes in the mirror blow-drying his hair, so his little surfer boy flip on the side of his hat was perfect.”

He took his road test young and already had a driver’s license. So his single mom bought him a truck for Christmas, and once he was driving, he was all over the place, she said.

“When I say my kid can go anywhere and never meet a stranger, everywhere he went he was making new friends, getting somebody’s number,” she told Fox News Digital. “I had a woman from Myrtle Beach, Little River, she wrote me after everything happened, and she said, ‘look, me and my husband own a Southern Outfitters store, my daughter met your son over spring break.’ They talked every day, through Snapchat, whatever. She said Trey really touched her heart.”

He also began going to car shows closer to Myrtle Beach, where he met Kistenmacher, Raper and some of the others.

Kistenmacher’s Myrtle Beach-based lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.