A Little Rock woman whose 6-year-old nephew accidentally killed himself with a pistol hidden in her car in 2015 was given a one-year suspended sentence last week on the condition that she gets therapy.
Both the prosecutors and the judge acknowledged that Kenya Brevard, 39, did not intend to harm Eron Wallace Jones and that she’s been devastated by his death.
During her sentencing Thursday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen urged Brevard to embrace counseling and try to overcome her grief for her family’s sake.
“None of us can bring Eron back. But we don’t want to lose you, too,” he said. “I want you to remember that we are all human beings and we are all negligent sometimes. Tragically, your actions had tragic consequences. The folks who know you believe in you. Believe in yourself.”
Brevard, a mother of two, declined an opportunity to address the court. Coincidentally, her 24-minute sentencing hearing was attended by about 20 students from Baseline Elementary School who had come to court to observe the proceedings and meet the judge.
Brevard pleaded guilty to misdemeanor negligent homicide in November in exchange for prosecutors dropping a felony charge of felon in possession of a firearm. A 1997 conviction for forgery, which was expunged from her record in 2001, bars Brevard from legally owning a gun.
Deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill told the judge that prosecutors never disputed Brevard loved her nephew and that they did not believe she had intentionally harmed him.
Sherrill said Brevard, who had a been a primary caretaker for the boy, was charged because prosecutors could not overlook the dangerous behavior of leaving a child “with a 6-year-old’s curiosity” in the car near a loaded gun, especially one with a lighted scope.
The prosecutor said the boy’s family declined her offers to consult with her about how to resolve the case.
The boy, one of four siblings, was killed in November 2015 about a week before his seventh birthday. Brevard told police that she had put the gun in the car that same morning, after accidentally leaving it at her boyfriend’s home. She hid it in the folding armrest in the back seat then forgot about it, she said.
Eron was with her while she ran some errands with her 14-year-old daughter, she told police. They stopped at her boyfriend’s Lamar Street home to check on her pets, she said, but Eron did not immediately get out of the car.
Brevard said that she and her daughter walked to the backyard, but that she stopped and turned back toward the car and waved at Eron to join them.
Her daughter went into the backyard, while Brevard started walking back to the car, calling to the boy until she got close enough to see his face was bleeding, she told police.
“I saw his face was leaned up against the door. He had blood coming down, from his eye,” Brevard told detective Steve Moore. “I said, ‘Eron, what happened? What are you in there doing?’ And I opened the door and just saw all the blood. And I saw the gun was laying in the floor.”
Brevard said she called 911 as she tried to comfort Eron and tend to his wounds.
“I was telling him to hold on and keep breathing. And I was there and I love him and, you know, I’m telling him I’m sorry I left it in the car where he could have got into it,” she said. “I thought I had put the gun where nobody could see it. And so I was just gonna take it home and put it away in a case that I have for it.”
Police arrived on the scene to find a weeping and wailing Brevard pressing towels against the boy’s bleeding head. Brevard told the first officer to reach her that, “He’s just six years old. I forgot the gun was in there.”
At Thursday’s sentencing, defense attorney Denese Fletcher questioned whether the gun really belonged to Brevard, although the woman had told police she bought the gun for self-protection and installed the scope herself.
Fletcher said the gun more likely belonged to Brevard’s then-boyfriend. She asked the judge to consider the police interview in which Brevard appeared unfamiliar with the weapon and the scope.
Fletcher also asked Griffen not to hold Brevard’s 20-year-old forgery conviction against her because she was 19 at the time. Brevard served out her probation, got an education and has now worked as a phlebotomist for 15 years, Fletcher said.
Brevard has otherwise lived an exemplary life, the kind judges hope probationers go on to have, the attorney said.
“She made a momentary lapse of judgment, and it led to tragic consequences,” Fletcher told the judge. “Eron was with her that day because she loved him. She simply forgot the gun was in the car.”
Brevard’s cousin, Latonia Allen, a registered nurse, testified as a character witness on behalf of the family. She told the judge that Brevard is a “good person” whom she’s never known to be violent or carry a gun.
Allen told the judge she’s never seen Brevard engage in criminal activity. She said she’d recognize if Brevard had because some members of her family have been in trouble with the law.
Court records show that Eron’s mother — who is Brevard’s sister, 35-year-old Tara Nichole Burks — spent more than a year in federal custody after Burks got caught up in Brevard’s brother’s drug trafficking ring in 2005. Burks pleaded guilty in 2006 to misprision of a felony for not reporting drug-trafficking to authorities.