2 arrested in Charlotte after 12-year-old boy killed in home
A 12-year-old boy died after being shot at a north Charlotte home Thursday night, according to police and emergency dispatch radio.
Ahmad Wrighten’s death is being investigated as a homicide, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Anthony Rashad Wigfall, 34, and Demetria Robinson, 32, were arrested and charged with murder, CMPD said.
Police said the boy had “sustained apparent trauma” when paramedics responded to a home in the 5600 block of Sunwalk Court at about 11:30 p.m. They took him from the residential neighborhood off Statesville Road to Atrium Health hospital, where he died, police said.
Emergency dispatch radio obtained via Broadcastify revealed officers were called to the scene at about 11:30 p.m. after someone “shot an 11-year-old.” CMPD confirmed police were responding to an assault with a deadly weapon call for service and later said the victim was 12.
Anyone with information in the case is asked to call the CMPD Homicide Unit at 704-432-TIPS or Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
Neighborhood turned crime scene
Everyone living on Sunwalk Court knows each other, said Thaddeus Johnson. You can tell as soon as you turn off the main road into the residential neighborhood near Interstate 77 and Nevin Park. The 70-year-old has lived in his home — the one next to the crime scene — since 1995.
He didn’t know the boy’s family well, he said. They mostly kept to themselves. He’d mow their lawn — like he does for most of the neighbors — and wave anytime kids played in the backyard, which was often.
When the family moved in about five months ago, he remembers, they said they hoped he liked kids. There’d be a lot of them around.
He was OK with that. He and his neighbors, who call him Uncle Butch, regularly held family-style cookouts in the cul-de-sac.
They were family, after all.
All the other homeowners on the street were related to each other, he said. He’s an honorary member of the family and has been for nearly 30 years.
Johnson sat next door in his “nephew’s” backyard Friday afternoon. They glanced two doors down, to the house where the boy died the night before.
He’d gotten home from work at a museum in Salisbury at about 10:45 p.m. Thursday. By the time he was ready for bed, ambulance and police lights lit up his room.
“I saw all that yellow tape everywhere and it scared me,” he said. “You know when you see that yellow tape something bad is happening.”
He never heard a gunshot, he said. He doesn’t know what really happened.
Kids and guns in Charlotte
In April, a 3-year-old boy died after being shot in southwest Charlotte. His father was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter and failure to secure a firearm from a minor, according to a CMPD news release.
Also in April, an 8-year-old girl was seriously injured when a bullet tore through her house and into her head while she slept. She lost feeling in one side of her body, her grandmother said.
Evelyn Poe, 61, a gun control and safety advocate, came out to the scene Friday afternoon. Her best friend started Angels for No Mercy after her son and grandson were shot and killed in 2021, she said.
Teenagers need to stop picking up guns, she said, and parents need to put their guns away. The organization gives out free locks to make sure weapons are at least properly stowed.
“Don’t leave your gun around. Pick it up. Move it,” she said. ”Kids don’t know if it’s a water gun, a BB gun. They just pick it up and want to play. They don’t know. They’re kids.”
Statistics show that combining kids and guns has deadly and life-altering consequences.
From 2019 to 2021 the number of minors killed by guns more than doubled to 121, according to data from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
From 2012 to 2021, the rate of North Carolina youth killed by firearms rose from 1.6 to 5.3 per 100,000 minor-aged residents.
Despite recent shootings, police said crime in Charlotte has dropped citywide compared to last year.
The city has seen a 12% decrease in overall violent crime so far this year, and CMPD officials said the number of gun-related crimes involving kids is also decreasing.
At least 27 people — including three children — have died in Charlotte shootings so far this year. More have been injured. As of last month, CMPD recorded a total of 31 homicides in Charlotte this year.
This year’s 2,359 victims of firearm-related crime in Charlotte is down approximately 4% compared to this time last year.
The drop is largely due to the 1,400 firearms seized this year, said CMPD public information officer Mike Allinger.
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