'He looks like a kid. And he is a kid': Juveniles accused in crimes surging in NC

Toshauna Parker talked to her son, Cailee Parker, on the phone twice a day -- at 10 a.m., and 10 p.m. On the night of Sept. 13, he didn't call. She knew something was wrong.

Hillsborough Police say the 20-year-old Durham resident was shot and killed on West Orange Street that night. Two 17-year-olds have since been charged with his murder.

"He was full of life. He loved to have fun. He loved family," his mom recalled. "To know him is to love him."

Parker said her son loved family, and art. Reminders of that art are scattered throughout the City. He was part of youth group that painted Durham utility boxes in the summer of 2017.

WRAL interviewed him then, as he worked on that project.

"I feel like we're bettering the community because they need something positive, so everyone can look at it and be able to take away something from it," he told WRAL then.

His mom said he had since graduated from Durham School of the Arts and was living on his own, working at Chick-fil-A.

She was well-aware of the dangers and negative influences in society, and said she and her husband worked hard to shield their kids as much as they could.

She does not know the people charged in her son's death, or why they would want to harm her son, who she said was a "class clown" who had never been in trouble with the law.

"He wasn’t one of these people just hanging out on the streets," she said. "He was filled with positivity."

State data compiled by WRAL Investigates shows the number of juveniles accused in crimes is climbing.

Since 2020, overall juvenile complaints are up 19%. Looking at the youngest age groups, the increase is even more dramatic. Complaints against 11-year-old are up 29%, and complaints against 12 and 13-year-old are up 35%.

All of these numbers are after the "Change the Age" law went into effect, which moved 16 and 17-year-olds into the juvenile category.

In 2022, a state law removed most six to nine-year-olds from the juvenile system.

Data provided to WRAL Investigates by the state's Department of Juvenile Justice shows, through the end of September of this year, there were nearly 30,000 juvenile complaints filed - which is on pace to surpass the number of complaints in 2022 and 2021. Among the age categories, it shows 15-year-olds received the most complaints so far in 2023 (6,488).

At a county level, looking at 2023, 1,241 complaints were filed against juveniles through September in Cumberland County. That number was 1,182 in Durham (roughly double the number of complaints filed in 2022), and 2,557 in Wake County.

Because of the strain on the juvenile justice system, WRAL has reported that some children are forced to sleep on the floors of overcrowded youth detention facilities.

Parker says she went to the court appearance of the first suspect when he was charged, and she was stunned.

"It hurt my heart a little bit to see how young… like, this person, he just, he looks like a kid," she said. "And he is a kid."

State Representative Marcia Morey, a Democrat representing Durham, began her career as a prosecutor in Durham assigned to juvenile cases. She remains passionate about finding solutions to the rise in juvenile crime, which she believes comes in waves.

"Many of them have had hard lives," she said. "They’ve had no supervision. There has been a gang problem in Durham."

She believes more community support, parental involvement and stricter gun laws are key to tackling the issue.

"We have more guns in this society than we do people," Morey said. "Kids are able to get guns easily and we have not tightened up gun safety laws, red flag laws, that could address some of these problems. So I’d say the availability of guns really has accelerated what we’re seeing in violent crime."

Morey has long advocated for stricter gun laws, which have failed to gain widespread support in the state legislature.

Morey believes the juvenile justice system is equipped to handle the caseload, and the severity of the crimes.

"The consequences oftentimes are more restrictive than the adult system which is probation and paying money," she said. "In the juvenile system there is detention, there are the youth development centers, there’s more intensive supervision over the kids than the adults."

Parker, though, worries her son's accused killers will be granted leniency because of their age.

"Whatever the extent of the law for the significance of the crime is, I hope that is what [they get]," she said.

She laments that, despite her best efforts, violence claimed the life of her son, who had so much left to give.

"The fact of the matter is, it could happen to anybody," she said. "Did we expect it to come to our doorstep? No. But it could happen to anybody’s child. Including our own. We prayed and hoped that it wouldn’t, but it did."