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Inset: Anaya Zachary (KRIV/YouTube). Background: The playground in Baytown, Tex., where Anaya Zachary was fatally shot (KHOU/YouTube).
Police in Texas have arrested the parents of a teenager who allegedly grabbed a .38 Special revolver from their bedroom, which they kept in a travel bag, on the floor and unsecured, and used it to gun down a 14-year-old classmate following a dispute on the school bus, according to cops.
Kenneth Coney, 61, and Cassie Coney, 37, have both been charged with making a firearm accessible to a child as their son faces criminal charges in connection with the fatal shooting of Anaya Zachary in March. Authorities obtained a search warrant for the Coneys’ home and allegedly found the bag where the .38 Special was stored, according to Houston NBC affiliate KPRC.
Cops say there were no locks or attachments to keep the weapon secured inside the bag, and just a single zipper stood in the teen’s way, per KPRC.
“You left the gun where the baby could get his hands on it,” Zachary’s godmother, Sonya Stanford, told the outlet after hearing about the new charges.
“I forgive him. I forgive his parents,” Stanford said. “But sometime in life, we have to pay for things that our children do that we do not like what they do. So therefore, my thing is, God, just let justice come for Anaya.”
The teenage suspect, who was 13 at the time, allegedly got into a heated disagreement with Anaya on their school bus before shooting her on March 21 in the city of Baytown, which is about 25 miles east of Houston. The children attended Baytown Junior School, part of the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District (CISD).
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“He went home, put on all black, put on a black mask, and came back and called my baby’s name and he shot my baby four times,” Stanford alleged to KPRC in March.
She told local CBS outlet KHOU that the boy allegedly threatened Anaya before the shooting, saying: “I was told that he told Naya, ‘When I get off the bus, I’m going to kill you today.””
“She tried to turn around and run and he shot her twice in the back,” Anaya’s cousin, Janet Zachery, told the ABC affiliate KTRK. “And then when she fell, he shot her two more times,” Janet said.
According to police, the teen allegedly admitted that he returned home and placed the revolver back in his parents’ bag after shooting Zachary.
“If you would have been decent parents and had your gun locked away where he couldn’t have gotten his hands on it, none of this would have taken place,” Stanford concluded.
Her goddaughter’s alleged killer has been in custody at the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center on a charge of murder.
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