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Family In Shock As Investigators Unravel How Boy Was Killed

News Channel 8 photo by JULIE BUSCH

A group watches the activity near a vehicle involved in the death of young boy at Pinellas Point Apartments in St Petersburg Wednesday night.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 29, 2008

Updated: 05/29/2008 07:04 pm

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  Kevon Wilson

ST. PETERSBURG - Investigators today continued to unravel the sequence of events that led to a 14-year-old girl backing her mother's car out of a parking space Wednesday night, and then gunning it forward, overreaching her mark and killing a 5-year-old boy.

Meanwhile, family members of the boy, Kevon Wilson, were making funeral arrangements, and setting up a fund to pay for them. They were also planning a vigil at the scene of the accident for tonight at 7.

"It came over as a shock," Wilson's father, Leeandre Green, 26, said of his son's death. "I don't know where to turn at."

St. Petersburg police declined to release the name of the 14-year-old girl, the girl's mother, and another girl, 13, who was riding as a passenger in the Volkswagen Cabrio. Traffic Homicide Investigator Mike Jockers continued talking to witnesses today, said St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt.

The two juvenile occupants of the Cabrio are students at Thurgood Marshall Fundamental Middle School in St. Petersburg, school officials confirmed. They were not in school today.

The 14-year-old girl was supposed to be retrieving her books from the car at roughly 7:10 p.m. when she decided to put the keys into the ignition and back the car out of a parking space at the Pinellas Point apartment complex on 62nd Avenue South, Jockers said in a prepared statement.

She then put the car into drive, and accelerated quickly back into the space, Jockers said. Between the moving car and a apartment complex wall separating the complex from the neighborhood south of it were two boys -- Wilson and 8-year-old Jacquez D. Dawson, both of whom live at the complex.

Dawson was knocked to the side, but Wilson was pinned between the car and the wall and was crushed, Jockers said. In a panic, the 14-year-old girl put the car back in reverse and hit the accelerator, driving the car backward until it crashed rear-end first on top of a planter, Jockers said.

Wilson was described as a boy who liked to play with toy trucks and cars, shoot dart guns and catch lizards, said his aunt, Tivica Green-Muhammad.

Green, the boy's father, took issue with the management at the apartment complex because there was no park there where the children could play. As a result, children were forced to come up with their makeshift play spaces, such as the area around the wall where his son was killed and where the boy and playmates were accustomed to hunt for lizards.

"That's where they chose to play and find their lizards," Green said. "It wasn't like he was in the road."

Through a woman answering the telephone at the office at Pinellas Point apartments, the manager declined to comment.

Members of Wilson's family that could be reached were not blaming the 14-year-old driver or the girl's mother.

"We think it's a tragic situation for both families," said Green-Muhammad, the boy's aunt. "This was a baby that hit another baby. She has to live with that the rest of her life."

Contributions to Kevon Wilson's trust fund can be made at:

SunTrust Bank
2500 N. McMullen Booth Road
Clearwater, FL 33761
Contact person at bank: Larry Willams Sr.
(727) 796-6703
Toll free: 1-800-786-8787

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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