GRAND JURY INDICTS WOMAN, SON FOR BOY’S SHOOTING DEATH March 31, 2008 After an extensive nine-month investigation, a Suffolk County grand jury today returned indictments charging a Roxbury woman and her teenage son with manslaughter and other offenses in connection with the death of their son and brother, eight-year-old Liquarry Jefferson, in their Seaver Street home last summer, District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced. LAKEISHA GADSON, 31 (D.O.B. 8/17/76), the slain boy’s mother, faces a six-count indictment charging involuntary manslaughter, wantonly or recklessly permitting substantial bodily injury to a child, child endangerment, improper storage of a firearm, unlawful possession of a firearm, and misleading a police officer. She is expected to be arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court on April 2. JAYQUAN McCONNICO, 16 (D.O.B. 10/29/91), Jefferson’s brother, is charged with involuntary manslaughter, improper storage of a firearm, and misleading a police officer. McConnico, age 15 at the time of the boy’s death, was indicted as a youthful offender and will be summonsed into the Boston Juvenile Court for arraignment on April 7. “The facts are both shocking and sad,” Conley said. “Shocking because the actions that led to Liquarry’s death were so reckless and the consequences so predictable, and sad because an eight-year-old boy lost his life because the two people who should have been most concerned with his care and protection were utterly derelict in their duties.” Prosecutors allege that Gadson and/or McConnico obtained a 9mm Norinco semiautomatic handgun with the other’s knowledge and stored it unsecured with live ammunition in the top drawer of a small dresser in McConnico’s bedroom. The dresser stood about 2½’ off the ground, and Jefferson routinely played in and had access to the room. It was in McConnico’s room that Jefferson and his seven-year-old cousin were playing shortly after 11:00 p.m. on June 24, 2007, when the Norinco discharged and sent a 9mm round hurtling into Jefferson’s abdomen. Evidence suggests that McConnico placed a 911 call on a cellular phone, telling Massachusetts State Police dispatchers that someone had shot the boy through a window. Responding paramedics rushed the boy to Boston Medical Center, where he died of his injury. When Boston Police responded to the scene, McConnico allegedly provided a false name and stated that a lone male wearing a hooded sweatshirt had entered the apartment, gone to the back room, and shot his brother. For her part, Gadson told Boston Police that three males in sweatshirts had entered her home, gone straight to the rear as if targeting someone, and fired three rounds, hitting her son. The next morning, McConnico gave a different statement, indicating that three intruders had entered the house and fired twice, killing his brother. Later on June 25, Gadson and McConnico submitted to additional interviews and acknowledged having lied to police. Both stated that the two children had been playing alone in McConnico’s room – in which they had stored the unsecured, unregistered handgun and ammunition – when they heard gunfire. When they went to McConnico’s room, they told investigators, they found Jefferson grievously wounded. McConnico, with Gadson’s knowledge, allegedly retrieved the handgun and some ammunition, concealing them in some clothing and hiding them in the back hall. Gadson allegedly devised the intruder story and told McConnico and others in the residence to repeat it to police. “The evidence we’ve developed in the course of the past nine months suggests that the defendants obtained an unregistered firearm and stored it unsecured in a low dresser drawer in a room readily accessible to children,” Conley said. “That wanton, reckless behavior led predictably to the tragic – and entirely preventable – death of Liquarry Jefferson.” Return to the Press Releases page.