The parents of the 5-year-old boy shot to death while riding his bike in Wilson, North Carolina, want the death penalty for his alleged killer.
“I want the death penalty, and I’m going to seek it,” Cannon Hinnant’s mother, Bonny Waddell, said recently according to Fox 8.
“I agree with Cannon’s mother, that we are going to seek the death penalty,” the boy’s father, Austin Hinnant, commented.
Twenty-five-year-old Darius Nathaniel Sessoms faced a first-degree murder charge after he allegedly shot Cannon, who was his next door neighbor, on August 9th at a Mobile home park in Wilson.
“Family members told police that Cannon was outside on his bike, playing with his sisters, ages 8 and 7, when Sessoms walked up to the boy, pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger,” according to Breitbart News.
Hinnant said Sessoms was their neighbor for eight years and the two shared dinner together the day before the shooting.
He was inside the house when he heard the gun go off.
“The first thing that went through my mind was maybe he just fell off his bike. The closer I got to him, the more I realized it was something far more serious,” Hinnant recalled, adding Sessoms was in the yard next door holding the gun, pacing and frantic.
“There wasn’t anything between me and him, any bad blood whatsoever, for him to have a reason to do this,” he noted.
A funeral service was held Thursday for the little boy who was supposed to start kindergarten last week.
“Cannon’s murder was also the subject of a social media hashtag on Thursday called #SayHisName, as five mainstream broadcast news outlets refused to report on the incident,” according to Breitbart News.
As of Monday, a GoFundMe page set up to help with funeral costs had raised $756,567 of its $5,000 goal.
“My baby didn’t deserve this. He had the biggest smile, the biggest eyes. We lost a big piece of our family. He touched everybody that he knew,” Waddell said, adding, “I would love to know why this happened.”
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