WRAL Documentary: UnSafe: North Carolina kids dying from gun violence

- [Fon] July 25th, I dropped my daughters off

to this babysitter's house and I went to work.

- [Emergency Operator] Nine-one-

What's the address of the emergency?

- [Caller] Hey, I need (indistinct) Mercedes Drive,

and I need an ambulance here now.

- Okay, what's wrong?

- My son brought, I didn't know my son brought a gun home

from my dad's house and it fell out of the closet

and it shot the little girl that I'm babysitting.

- [Emergency Operator] Okay.

- [Caller] I need an ambulance now.

- [Emergency Operator] Okay, so we're gonna get

you help out there, okay?

Is she breathing?

- [Caller] Yes, yes, yes, yes, please hurry.

- [Emergency Operator] Yes ma'am,

they're already coming, okay?

- Oh, God, Jenesis, baby, Jenesis...

- A 9-year-old girl is in the hospital after being shot.

- An 8-year-old girl is fighting for her life.

- A 3-year-old boy accidentally shot

and killed himself last night.

- [Cristin] Guns kill more kids

in the U.S. than any other cause.

- More than cancer, and now more than motor vehicle crashes.

- [Cristin] Kids in North Carolina are 51%

more likely to die from guns compared to other states.

- I take bullets out of children,

sometimes day after day after day.

- And she's not gonna be in that

room when I go check on her.

And it's hard, it's a hard to accept.

(soft music)

- All of them could have been prevented, that's the thing.

All of them could have been prevented.

- [Reporter] Something we've been covering frequently,

here at WRAL, guns.

- [Cristin] For some, these tragic stories are so common,

they almost blur together.

And the fight for guns is so loud-

- [Reporter] Nation against gun violence.

- [Cristin] It drowns out meaningful change.

- We will not comply.

- I just wish we could take politics out of it.

- So how often are you bringing

this issue up with your patients?

I'm WRAL Investigative documentary reporter,

Cristin Severance.

- You know, with us grieving-

- [Cristin] I talked to families impacted

by gun violence and experts across the state.

They say there's a clear way to save kids,

a solution with bipartisan support.

- First, unsecured firearms.

That is a huge problem that we have.

- Kids know where parents keep their guns,

even if parents think they don't

- I mean, I'll just ask the question.

Are you trying to take people's guns away?

- I do not want to take people's guns away.

I want them to keep the guns

that they have more safely secured.

- I am not anti-gun, by far.

However, if this gun is where it should be at,

secured in the safe, we are not sitting here today.

(energetic music)

- Welcome back to my channel.

Before you get started, click that subscribe button.

(indistinct)

Today we're gonna be doing like a dance.

I'd love to get my momma famous on YouTube.

I meant on TikTok.

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Good, let's get to a 1,000 followers.

Please, thank you, okay?

- [Cristin] Tell me about Jenesis, what was she like?

- She was bubbly, she smiled, oh my God, her smile.

- "I will bless you and make your name great."

- [Fon] She loved everybody.

She loved TikTok, she loved to do dances on TikTok.

(hip-hop music)

- [Kimberly] If you're having a bad day,

Jenesis is gonna make you laugh.

♪ Witches' broom, ride the witches' broom ♪

- Who she was in spirit,

really lit up the room no matter where she was.

And that was my Jenesis, that was her.

- Oh Jesus, look at,

Oh, Jesus, I know it was a picture, okay.

- That's a big picture of my baby, that beautiful smile.

- [Cristin] Fon and Kimberly Dockery's,

8-year-old daughter, Jenesis,

had a built-in best friend,

her five-year-old sister Amara.

- [Fon] And they were two peas in a pod,

everywhere together.

- Say Jesus loves you!

- Jesus loves you!

I want to say that, loves you!

- [Kimberly] Say Jesus loves you, nut!

- Her and her sister, two little angels, two little angels.

Well, I'm Gilbert Baez and I'm the Fayetteville reporter

for WRAL, and have been here for more than 40 years.

- [Cristin] Gilbert didn't know the Dockery family

until he started covering what happened on July 25th.

Fon dropped his girls off at their babysitter's

house in Fayetteville.

- And it's something he had done on sporadically,

on other occasions into a safe environment.

Never had any mention from his daughter, from Jenesis

or her sister that something was not right at this house.

They looked forward to going there.

They looked forward to it.

He had no reason to believe on this particular day

that anything was to be any different.

And unfortunately he was wrong.

- [Cristin] A short time after drop off,

Fon received a frantic call from the babysitter.

- This babysitter telling me,

screaming and crying that she didn't know, she didn't know.

And I'm like, you didn't know what?

And Jenesis has been shot.

Hey, I don't hear no sirens.

Where are the fire department sirens, or ambulances?

So I asked her, "Hey, have you called the ambulance?"

And she said, "No, I called you.

I said, "Get off the phone with me

"and save my daughter's life."

- [Emergency Operator] 9-1-1,

what's the address of the emergency?

- [Cristin] The babysitter called 9-1-1,

and told the operator what she said happened

at the beginning of the call.

- [Caller] My son brought, I didn't know

my son brought a gun home from

my dad's house and it fell out of the closet

and it shot the little girl that I'm babysitting.

- [Cristin] And again, at the very end of the call,

right before she hung up,

- [Babysitter] My son is the one

that brought it home, and I didn't know.

- [Cristin] Jenesis was shot in the head.

The 8-year-old was rushed to the hospital.

- She got shot on July 25th

and she passed away on July the 27th.

And she was just four days short of her ninth birthday.

- One of the hardest things, and it's still hard,

is accepting that it's real.

(soft music)

- [Cristin] Jenesis is one of hundreds

of kids over the last six years in North Carolina,

who died from gun violence.

600 kids have died since 2017,

according to the division of juvenile justice.

That's 600 kids.

- They've gotta find out how this happened,

who's responsible?

And it wasn't coming to light very quickly.

And then it was revealed to him that the son

of the mother that he trusted,

came to the home with a gun from his grandfather,

who somehow knew the combination to the safe

and got into the safe and brought the weapon over

and was either showing it or somehow the weapon went off.

- [Fon] I was told that this 11-year-old kid went

to the dad's house, her dad's house,

and brought a gun back that supposedly it fell off

of a shelf and went off and shot my daughter.

- [Cristin] Is that what you think happened?

- No, I do not.

- [Cristin] What do you think happened?

- I think he pulled the trigger,

'cause there's no way that grandfather,

as a gun owner, can tell me he believes

that a gun fell and went off

and the trajectory of that bullet

came from falling from the ground.

There's no way.

- The 11-year-old is also part

of a troubling trend in North Carolina.

Five years ago, the number of juvenile crimes committed

with a firearm was 4%.

Last year it was 13%.

That's a 400% increase in four years.

Tell me about what you learned regarding the 11-year-old.

- One thing that we uncovered, we were able

to find a picture of the 11-year-old, who's now 12,

by the way, on the internet, brandishing a weapon.

- And there are several videos circulating of

this young juvenile holding a weapon, very cavalier.

- [Cristin] Fon believes the picture

and videos show the 11-year-old had a fascination

with guns and his family knew and did nothing.

- Now we're being told that the picture that we have

of the child on the internet was a BB gun.

But the BB gun is now turned into a real gun,

and an 8-year-old is dead.

- [Cristin] Weeks after Jenesis died,

there was no one in custody.

- Beyond the actual death of my daughter,

that is the most tragic part of this to me and my family.

That an 8-year-old child's life can be taken,

and nobody be put into custody.

Not the babysitter who should have been supervising,

not the gun owner who should have been responsible

and knew where his gun was, and not the shooter himself.

Nobody was put in custody.

- [Cristin] The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office

eventually submitted a complaint

with the division of juvenile justice,

alleging two counts of larceny of a firearm

and one count of manslaughter were warranted

against the 11-year-old.

He was in juvenile custody

until a judge ordered him released to a family member.

- [Fon] We're in the front of the courthouse

and the sheriff's department in Cumberland County

- [Cristin] Fon attended every hearing.

- I have to go in this courtroom and look at this young man.

See his mom and his grandfather, the babysitter

and the gun owner,

and hear her pathetic excuses, constantly.

They walk out of the courtroom just like me,

like nothing took place, like they have no accountability,

like my child wasn't killed at their residence by his gun.

- [Cristin] The 11-year-old entered the juvenile equivalent

of a guilty plea and was placed on probation.

No charges have been filed against

his mother or grandfather.

- [Fon] I want accountability.

- So now he has a daughter who is dead

and no one being held accountable.

And that's the heartbreak of this story for him.

- And a daughter who witnessed it.

- Absolutely, what a difficult conversation to have.

- Beyond everybody in that house,

she is a witness to the exact events of that day.

How do you explain that your sister's not coming back?

- Sisters, who Gilbert had unknowingly met before.

After covering the story, he was sent a video

from a neighbor from Halloween night in 2022,

- [Child] Moana!

- [Cristin] When Jenesis and Amara went trick-or-treating

at his house.

- A friend of the family shot that footage

and sent it to me.

And as soon as I saw it, I remember how cute she was.

- [Cristin] This is a still picture of that moment.

- And I don't know what, if I had my crazy costume

on like, the Martians were taking me away.

I think that may have been the costume that I had on,

that she was just so innocent and so polite

and thankful for the candy.

Never thought that I would do a story on her.

And this was the last time I was gonna see her alive.

(soft music)

- [Cristin] So we're here, Mercedes Drive,

I'm gonna go in and talk to the mom of the 11-year-old.

(soft music)

(soft music)

We're in Fayetteville right now.

We were all set up to interview the babysitter.

Well, then she canceled.

So I've been texting with her back and forth.

She said I could come to the house, talk to her in person.

So that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna go talk to the mom of the 11-year-old.

And even though she canceled earlier,

hi, I'm Cristin, she agreed to talk

to me on the porch about the day Jenesis was shot.

- Honestly, it's destroyed me.

It destroyed my family, I'm in therapy, I'm in counseling.

My son, he cries on a daily basis.

Emotionally, it's messed him up bad, too.

- [Cristin] And so did you know the gun was here

when Fon dropped off his daughters?

- [Babysitter] No, absolutely not,

I would never allow guns in my house.

- [Cristin] How did your son,

how did the 11-year-old have a gun?

- [Babysitter] Yeah, I didn't know it was in my house,

and my father should have changed

his gun safe code, period.

Never should have been left the same.

It should have been changed.

- [Cristin] So your son stole the gun from your father safe.

He knew the code.

- [Babysitter] He said he figured the code out.

- [Cristin] She said her father never changed the code

from when he first bought the safe.

Her son found out and stole the gun.

- [Babysitter] Like, if your child goes

to a family member's house and they leave

and they go for the weekend and they come back home

and they have their same little bag

that they had clothes in, I mean you don't think

to check their bags.

I questioned myself and I said,

"Why didn't I check their bag?

"Why didn't I do this different?

"Why didn't I do that different?

"Why didn't I do that different?

I still question myself every single day,

on things that I could have done different.

- [Cristin] Did you ever talk to your son about guns?

Did you ever have a conversation with him

about how dangerous they are?

- [Babysitter] I mean, I've talked to my kids,

all of my kids about safety period, about guns,

about knives, about anything.

- This is that photo and WRAL has decided not

to identify him, but if you look,

what he's holding right there, clearly, a gun in his hand.

- [Cristin] Why do you think he did it?

Why do you think your son took that gun?

- [Babysitter] I was told that

his friends would think he was cool.

My first response was, if your friends think you're cool

because you have a gun,

then you have the wrong type of friends at school.

- [Cristin] You know there are pictures

of your son online with a gun, tell me about that.

- [Babysitter] No, I never knew they ever existed.

And the pictures

of my son holding a gun, was a BB gun

that my father had gotten for my son

and I had taken it from him.

I begged the cops to take that BB gun out of

my house and they told me they couldn't.

- [Cristin] Before the shooting?

- [Babysitter] No, after.

- [Cristin] So tell me about your dad, that part of it.

When it comes to holding someone accountable,

like, who do you think should be held accountable?

- [Babysitter] I mean,

he should have changed the safe code, period.

I don't care if he's 70 years old,

I don't care if he's 30 years old, he's a gun owner.

He knows to change a code so nobody will know it.

- [Cristin] She admits her son is to blame as well.

- [Babysitter] At the end of the day, like,

if he never would've put his hands on that gun,

this never would've happened.

If he would not have went into the gun safe,

this wouldn't have happened.

So I mean, there's so many things like,

yes, he should have been charged with larceny

of a firearm because he did, he knew better.

(soft music)

- [Cristin] You knew Fon for a long time

and I know you babysat the girls before.

What do you want to say to the Dockery family?

- [Babysitter] I'm sorry, I would give anything

to be able to go back and change that day.

I would do anything to bring Jenesis back.

(soft music)

- [Cristin] This story shows

how many lives are forever changed

by one senseless shooting death.

That's why the babysitter even agreed to talk to me.

And there are hundreds of these stories

in North Carolina.

- Right now, at six, a six-month-old baby is

at the UNC Medical Center, after being shot.

- An 11-year-old boy injured while sleeping,

after a home was sprayed with bullets.

- After a 10-year-old boy

accidentally shot his one-year-old cousin,

- [Cristin] WRAL looked at statewide death records,

finding since 2018, 521 kids under 18 died

from guns in our state, including accidental shootings,

homicides, and suicides.

15% of those who died were 11 years old or younger.

- We need to focus as a state on this to make sure

that we can bring those numbers down.

- [Cristin] Why are these numbers so high?

Well, there are a lot of guns in North Carolina

and a lot of them not safely stored.

- 42% of all households in state Carolina own firearms.

Of those 42% of households last year,

50% of those households told us they did not

safely store that firearm.

- [Cristin] Nearly 1.7 million homes have guns

in North Carolina and more than 840,000 homes have guns

that are not safely stored.

- [William] I'm not saying that guns are bad,

what we're trying to say is that bad ownership

or not responsible ownership, is what's bad.

- [Cristin] William Lassiter told me

more than 1000 crimes were committed

by juveniles involving a gun in

In 2023, that number was more than 5,000.

They found unsecured guns are getting stolen from

homes and cars.

- In the city of Durham,

60% of the firearms that were stolen

by juveniles were stolen from unlocked cars.

So what we're trying to do is figure out

how do we limit access to young people

and to criminals to firearms.

- [Cristin] Many experts in North Carolina say safe storage,

keeping your guns in a safe

or using a gun lock is one answer.

- Up to 32% of unintentional firearm deaths,

suicides, homicides for kids could be prevented,

if households with guns started safely storing their guns.

- [Cristin] Kella Hatcher

and the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force,

have been pushing for a statewide

safe storage initiative for year

In 2023, lawmakers approved a

two-year safe storage campaign.

- We've been able to find common ground

among all sorts of people on this issue,

and that includes legislators.

- [Cristin] However,

those same lawmakers did not fund the plan,

something the group is pushing for in 2024.

The Department of Public Safety found a year's worth

of federal dollars to launch the NC Safe campaign.

- [TV Announcer] North Carolina, we have a problem.

Guns are falling into the wrong hands.

- [TV Announcer] Make sure you secure

your firearms effectively.

- [Cristin] So far they've given out tens

of thousands of gun locks and hundreds of gun safes.

- [William] We just ordered another 25,000 locks

and we're distributing them right now,

to local health departments.

We are working with a lot of the

typical gun rights groups across the state

of North Carolina on this campaign,

and a lot of the shooting ranges across the state

because look, the audience we're trying

to reach are gun owners.

It doesn't do me any good to talk about safe storage

with people that don't own a gun

- We bring this up at every single well-child visit.

- [Cristin] Dr. Brian Eichner gives out

free gun locks to parents of his patients

and talks about gun safety with his families.

- [Brian] In the 17 years I've been doing this,

I've only had one family really question me

why I was asking.

- [Cristin] He does it because the leading cause of death

among young people is guns.

- It's due to the fact that the rates are rising,

but also due to the fact that we've had successes

in decreasing deaths from motor vehicle accidents.

- [Cristin] Experts say when it comes to safe storage,

there are lessons to be learned by the interventions made

to motor vehicles in the U.S. to save lives.

- We didn't take people's cars away,

we didn't tell people they couldn't drive,

but we said, how do we make the roads safer?

Thinking about guardrails, thinking about lighting,

how do we make cars safer?

And that has resulted now, a 70% decrease

in death from car crashes.

I think we can apply that same model

when thinking about firearm violence.

- We're hoping that the General Assembly will help

fund this moving forward.

We're asking for about two and a half million dollars,

which will help us buy more gun locks, more gun saves,

but also keep the messaging out there.

- [Cristin] And while they've had support from both sides

of the political spectrum, there is support

from both sides of the tragedy in Fayetteville, too.

Moms like the babysitter, dads like Fon,

both saying proper safe storage could have saved Jenesis

and saved them all a lifetime of heartbreak.

- [Babysitter] I want to do something to promote gun safety.

If you get a safe, change the code.

Don't leave it the generic code as it comes.

Store your ammunition and your guns in separate places.

- Jenesis Dockery is a reason

that safe gun ownership is required,

because irresponsible gun ownership,

leads to events like this.

(soft music)

That pure love, that type of love,

is how we unite this world, how we come together.

- Thank you sir.

- [Cristin] We were with the Dockery family

when they returned to Jenesis and Amara's school,

Riverside Christian Academy in Fayetteville.

Her family and friends are struggling

with the eight-year-old's death.

- But they allowed us to do a balloon release for Jenesis.

Dr. Sines, he principal, his idea was,

"Hey, let's allow them to write a letter,

"their own little letter, let's put it in a balloon

"and release it."

- [Teacher] Here, hold on to them, it's a windy day.

- [Student] It’s a dove flying!

- [Fon] This isn't just our loss,

y'all were friends with Jenesis.

Y'all made memories with Jenesis

Alright, on three we gonna say we love you,

Jenesis, and we gonna let 'em go, alright?

One, two, three, love you, Jenesis,

- [Student] I love you, Jenesis.

- [Student] Mine's the highest!

- [Fon] They don't even know it,

but it's it's therapy to have those feelings

and to release t hose feelings upwards.

So we're seeing love for our daughter by these kids.

(student sobbing)

It is hard going to see your child

at the cemetery, knowing she did nothing wrong

but be a child, knowing she loved so much,

and that was taken from us.

(soft music)