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Javonni Carson: Nine-year-old shot four times while filming TikTok videos

A striving football player and rapper, Javonni Carson is expected to recover from a shattered femur

Justin Vallejo
New York
Monday 13 July 2020 22:03 BST
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(GoFundMe)

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A fourth-grade boy shot four times in Atlanta was filming TikTok videos with his two siblings when an unknown gunman fired into a crowd during a drive-by shooting, his mother said.

Javonni Carson, 9, who was one of three people injured in the attack, has undergone surgery and is expected to recover, mother Keyona Carson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"My other two kids were there, too, and they saw everything," Ms Carson, 35, told the outlet. "Someone just drove by and started shooting."

Javonni was shot four times in his left leg and rushed by his father to hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove the bullets and repair a shattered femur.

The shooting took place in the parking lot outside the Gaja Korean Bar in East Atlanta about 9 pm on Wednesday, 8 July, according to an incident report of the shutting.

The police report said at least five cars were also struck by gunfire, with officers recovering 42 shell casings from the scene. Police said surveillance footage showed a man pull a gun and open fire from a dark vehicle driving through the parking lot.

No arrests have been made.

Ms Carson said that after the shots her 11-year-old tried to crawl over to Javonni.

"But there were already so many people on the ground. I didn't know anything until I got to the hospital. I just knew he'd been shot," she told the Journal-Constitution.

Writing on a GoFundMe page to raise funds for Javonni's treatment, Ms Carson said her son is an honour roll student at Deerwood Academy, and that all three of her children were affected by the senseless violence.

"They were there also, they saw all those guns, blood and seen the fire of those bullets as people fell in front of them and hid and ran and screamed for help... (This world is out of control)," she wrote.

"Thank you for all the prayers that my baby just be as normal as he was while making his TikTok video."

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