The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Family seeks answers after teen dies at sleepover
‘There’s no answers . ... There’s no nothing. Just sit back and wait.’
She isn’t sure who shot and killed her 15-year-old son while he slept at a friend’s house. Ashley Heard feels certain that he didn’t shoot himself.
“First it was that he shot himself playing with the game, which I said from the very beginning is not possible,” Heard said. “But then the autopsy report also confirmed that it is a homicide, which means that he was injured by someone else.”
More than four months after Charles “CJ” Brown was killed, Heard said she’s still waiting for justice. Cobb County police have not announced any arrests in the case.
“I mean he’s just gone,” Heard said during an interview with Channel 2 Action News. “There’s no answers. There’s no justice. There’s no plan. There’s no nothing. Just sit back and wait.”
She had given Charles permission to spend the night at a friend’s house. The plan changed and her son had ended up at another friend’s house for the night.
The next morning, Charles was shot in the face. The bullet damaged his brain, and he likely didn’t feel any pain, doctors told her. Charles died at 6:04 p.m. on May 28 at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital.
The day Charles was shot, he was the third metro Atlanta teenager injured by gunfire in eight hours. Earlier that day Bre’Asia Powell, 16, and another teen were shot outside Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta. Bre’Asia died from her injuries.
Two days later Brian Brown, 17, of Powder Springs was shot to
death in Douglas County, investigators said. Arrests were made in the shootings that killed Powell and Brown, according to police.
The deadly trend of children dying by gunfire isn’t unique to the metro area. According to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1-19 in 2022.
The number and rate of children and teens killed by gunfire in 2021 were both higher than at any point since at least 1999, the earliest year for which information about those younger than 18 is available in the CDC’s mortality database, a Pew Research Center determined. The majority of gun deaths among children were homicides, the study found.
In her son’s case, Heard says, Charles knew about gun safety and had been to a firing range. She doesn’t believe he could have been playing with a gun and turned it on himself.
“None of us are able to grieve properly because we can’t get past the angry phase,” Heard said during a June interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “From the way we feel, there’s been no respect for human life. Nobody seems to know answers and that’s what hurts.”
Charles had just finished his freshman year at Campbell High School, loved roller skating and stayed busy helping with his 2-year-old sister. The middle of five children, he had recently bought a pair of clippers and hoped to work alongside his stepfather, a barber, to earn some money. He would have celebrated his 16th birthday Aug. 1.
Heard says her family is hopeful someone will come forward with information and that someone is held responsible for her son’s death.
“I’m just asking anyone out there to like imagine if this was your child,” she said. “And it’s like just help in any way that you know.”