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Investigators Putting Together How Boy, 5, Was Killed

Photo from family

Kevon Wilson, right, liked to play with toy trucks and cars and catch lizards, his aunt said.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 30, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Investigators continued Thursday 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 target and killing a 5-year-old boy.

Meanwhile, relatives of the boy, Kevon Wilson, were making funeral arrangements and setting up a fund to pay for them.

Those wishing to donate to the fund can contact Larry Willams Sr. at SunTrust Bank, 2500 N. McMullen Booth Road, Clearwater, at (727) 796-6703, or toll-free at 1-800-786-8787.

"It came over as a shock," Kevon'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 or another girl, 13, who was a passenger in the Volkswagen Cabrio. Traffic homicide investigator Mike Jockers continued talking to witnesses Thursday, St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.

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 Thursday.

The 14-year-old girl was supposed to be retrieving her books from the car at roughly 7:10 p.m. Wednesday 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 statement.

She then put the car into drive and accelerated quickly back into the space, Jockers said. Between the moving car and an apartment complex wall were two boys - Kevon and 8-year-old Jacquez D. Dawson, both residents at the complex.

Jacquez was knocked to the side, but Kevon was crushed between the car and the wall, 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.

Kevon 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 found makeshift play spaces, such as the area around the wall where Kevon was killed.

"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 Kevon's family who were available for comment stopped short of blaming the 14-year-old driver or the girl's mother. They say they want the justice system to take its course.

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

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