Four teenagers were arrested after a Tennessee high school student was killed in a drive-by shooting after a football game in late August.
Local police said 16-year-old Cameron Frierson was shot to death in front of his younger brother, Chris, on Aug. 21 while the boys were watching a football game at Pearl-Cohn High School in Nashville, six weeks after two boys were shot to death.
Jon’quavous Johns-Collins, 18, Marcelle Stem Jr., 17, Lil Tay Webster, 17, and Zachkeius Brown, 16, have all been charged with criminal homicide and participation in a criminal conspiracy, the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department announced Friday.
Brittany Frierson, the mother of the slain teen, faced off against one of her son’s accused killers in court Friday, warning the four suspects “you’re going to see my face in every court hearing.”
“I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll be here every day,” the grieving mother told local ABC affiliate WKRN-TV.
Police said that at 10:30 that night, the four teenagers were in a car and “multiple shots were fired” in the car.
Cameron Frierson, a junior at Hunters Lane High School, was hit by flying bullets and first responders found him with multiple gunshot wounds.
He was taken to Vanderbilt University Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Friesen’s brother was not injured.
Police are still investigating the motive behind the shooting.
Witnesses at the time said the shots came from a white sedan with tinted windows, WKRN-TV reported.
All suspects were minors at the time of the shooting and were charged in juvenile court, the police department said in a media release.
Friday’s court hearing was painful and meaningful for the victim’s grieving mother, but she said she was “grateful that my son will get the justice he deserves because he didn’t deserve to be treated like this.”
“He’s mine and you have no right to take him away from me,” Brittany Friesen said.
The heartbroken mother said that while she sympathizes with the circumstances some of the arrested teenagers may be facing growing up, that doesn’t excuse what they allegedly did to her son.
“I have a lot of sympathy for them because I know what kind of background they come from and I know they may not have the easiest route, but that doesn’t give them the right to hurt other people,” she told the outlet.
“My son didn’t do anything to them,” she said, claiming that “if it wasn’t Cameron, it would have been someone that night because it was in their head. That’s what they wanted to do.”
“We have to do better with our kids,” Friesen pleads, because “these kids are clearly hurting enough that they feel the need to go out and hurt other people.”
“It all starts at home,” she emphasizes.