2 charged in murder of high school football player shot while shielding friends
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A Tennessee prosecutor says two men are charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a 15-year-old boy who shielded several young girls from gunfire.
Zaevion Dobson, a high school football player, was praised by President Barack Obama as a hero shortly after the teenager was killed Dec. 17, 2015. He was also honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. There’s a Zaevion Dobson Memorial Playground and Park in the works near his Knoxville home.
On Thursday, Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen said in a news conference that Christopher Bassett and Richard Williams had been jailed on a $1 million bond in Zaevion’s death. They are also charged with the attempted murders of eight others.
Allen did not take questions.
“It was an honor for my son to protect another individual,” Dobson’s mother Zenobia Dobson told CBS News in December.
The girls who the boy shielded from gunfire also hailed him as a hero.
“If it wasn’t for Zaevion, me or her would have probably been shot,” one of them told CBS News.
They were unharmed.
Knoxville police chief David Rausch has said the teen was caught in the crossfire of rival gangs. He identified one of the shooters as alleged gang member Brandon Perry, who he said was shot and killed by a rival gang less than three hours after shooting at Dobson.
Police said Dobson and his friends had no gang ties, reports the Tennessean. They believe they were mistakenly targeted.
Bassett was arrested the morning after Dobson’s shooting and has been behind bars for months on a weapons charge, the paper reports. He allegedly told police he was among gang members who opened fire on the home where Dobson and his friends were gathered.
Williams was reportedly arrested in April after police say he ran from the scene of a car crash.
No one returned a telephone call to the public defender’s office asking about attorneys for the two men.