A middle school student in Mississippi was shot “multiple times” by a set of teenagers Monday, police allege. The 14-year-old’s mother says her son knew at least one of the suspects.
His body riddled with bullets, Cameron Horne-Crook was pronounced dead at the south Jackson crime scene Monday, police confirmed in a press release obtained.
Siyaski Crawford, 15, Maxle Mooneyham, 16, and John Foote, 17, are each charged with Cameron’s murder. (PEOPLE is naming the teens because they are charged as adults in the case.)
Cameron, a student at Northwest Rankin Middle School, knew Mooneyham, who had previously attended the school, according to WAPT News, a local outlet which interviewed Cameron’s mother, Violet Horne.
Standing outside a Jackson police station, Horne alleged that Mooneyham had picked up her son from a friend’s house in Brandon, Miss., and driven him to neighboring Hinds County, where he was later killed. (In an interview Friday, Sam Brown of the Jackson Police Department told PEOPLE that Mooneyham had been the one who allegedly drove Cameron across county lines to the state’s capital.)
There, per an affidavit reviewed, a Jackson detective claims that Foote “of his malicious aforethought with deliberate design to effect death” shot and killed Cameron “multiple times with an unknown caliber firearm.”
Later, Mooneyham – who is additionally charged with tampering with evidence in connection with Cameron’s death – returned home and cleared out his car, removing evidence of the crime, Brown alleges to PEOPLE.
Police have not released a motive for the child’s murder.
“It wasn’t a motive, just hate,” Cameron’s mother told WAPT. “Just hate.”
Describing her son as “fun, loving,” and always “cracking jokes,” Horne said Cameron had been looking forward to starting high school next year.
Mooneyham and Foote were arrested Wednesday, per police. Crawford was apprehended a day later. A fourth unnamed suspect remains at large, Brown says.
Horne told WAPT she had grilled Mooneyham about her son’s death prior to his arrest.
“He had plenty of chances to stop and call the police and he didn’t,” she told the outlet.
At his initial court appearance earlier this week, Mooneyham’s parents were tossed out of the courtroom, per WAPT, after shouting that their son had been held up at gunpoint in the course of the crime.
“It’s clearly a privileged child,” Horne told the outlet. “The way the parents just threw a temper tantrum ‘cause they can’t get what they want.”
Mooneyham previously attended a private school in Jackson. The teen’s father, Buster Mooneyham, owns a wedding limousine rental company.
At Foote’s initial court appearance Wednesday, the 17-year-old, housed at Jackson City Jail, an adult facility, printed his name on an affidavit of indigence, asking that a court-appointed lawyer be assigned to him, according to municipal court filings reviewed by PEOPLE.
It was not immediately clear if Foote, Mooneyham and Crawford had yet pleaded to the charges or obtained lawyers.
Brown tells PEOPLE the three teenagers could face elevated capital murder charges, which in Mississippi can carry the death penalty upon conviction.
Both Mooneyham and Crawford were each jailed on a $1.5 million bond, according to police. Foote was denied bond. Horne says she will keep fighting for her son.
“I took care of Cameron,” she told WAPT. “And I will take care of Cameron until I get him to his final resting place.”
If you have information about this ongoing investigation, contact the Jackson Police Department at 601-960-1234 or call Crime Stoppers at 601-355- (TIPS) 8477.
The parents of the 3 murders should also be charged. They raised this trash with no sense of decency. When you have kids it’s your job to instill these things not sit back doing nothing they run the streets having no idea where they are. This is probably single parents living on assistance. If you don’t want to raise kids stop having them!!!!!!!!!!!!!