Atlanta police arrested 19-year-old Davion Curney on Friday, nearly two weeks after 13-year-old Cameron Boone was found shot to death inside a home on Lindsay Street NW in the city's English Avenue neighborhood. Curney was booked into the Fulton County Jail on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct, tampering with evidence, and making false statements.
The arrest, first reported by Atlanta News First, closes out a tense two-week gap between Boone's death and any public accounting of what happened inside the house. Police had responded around 3:46 a.m. on July 28 to 416 Lindsay Street NW, near Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard, where they found Boone unresponsive with a gunshot wound; he was pronounced dead at the scene, according to 11Alive. Officers and medical examiners spent hours canvassing the scene and interviewing occupants inside the home that night.
Per arrest warrants cited by Atlanta News First, investigators determined that Curney caused Boone's death while smoking marijuana and mishandling an unsecured firearm. The warrants state the gun fell and went off as Curney tried to grab it. According to officers at the scene, other children were inside the house during the shooting, though none of them were hurt.
A Father's Doubts About the Official Story
Boone's father, Anthony Boone, has publicly disputed an early account from people inside the home who initially claimed his son had shot himself. Speaking to WSB-TV, he said he found his son lying on a couch under a blanket with his phone resting on his chest, a scene he felt did not match a self-inflicted shooting. He also questioned why emergency services were not called immediately and pointed out that his son was right-handed, yet suffered a gunshot wound to the left side of his head.
The Atlanta Police Department has confirmed that Curney now faces several charges connected to the shooting death, though the case as charged reflects allegations of negligence rather than an intentional killing. Under Georgia law, felony involuntary manslaughter, as outlined in O.C.G.A. § 16-5-3, applies when an unintentional death results from a non-felony unlawful act and carries a penalty of one to ten years in prison, according to Bixon Law. That charge is distinct from misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter, which carries under a year in jail.
The reckless conduct charge, filed under O.C.G.A. § 16-5-60, is a misdemeanor covering a gross deviation from standard care that endangers another person's safety, punishable in Fulton County by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, per Atlanta Criminal Defense Attorneys. Prosecutors pursuing that count must prove criminal negligence rather than intent to kill. Curney has been charged, not convicted, and the case remains at the allegation stage.
Georgia's Storage Law Gap
Boone's death lands amid a broader debate in Georgia over gun storage. The state has no mandatory safe firearm storage or child access prevention law, and a proposed measure known as the Pediatric Health Safe Storage Act, or HB 1, died in committee earlier this year, according to BillTrack50 records. That bill would have penalized adults who left loaded firearms accessible to minors.
The stakes of that policy gap are stark statewide. Firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among Georgia children ages 1 to 17 in 2023, accounting for 129 youth fatalities, according to data released in February by the Emory Center for Child Health Policy. Firearm deaths in Georgia have now surpassed motor vehicle crashes and illness as a cause of death among minors. A companion poll from the same center found that nearly 80% of Georgia parents support civil and criminal penalties when a child is harmed by an unsafely stored firearm, with gun violence ranking as parents' top overall worry this year.
Boone's death is not the first shooting involving a teenager on this stretch of northwest Atlanta. In April, a 17-year-old was wounded in a pre-dawn shooting in the 500 block of Lindsay Street NW near Lindsay Street Baptist Church, an incident that prompted local community members and city leaders to call for expanded patrols in the corridor.
Community Prepares to Say Goodbye
A celebration of life for Cameron Lavon Boone is scheduled for Saturday at the Willie A. Watkins Historic West End Chapel in Atlanta, according to a listing on Legacy.com. Boone was about to start the eighth grade before his death. As the criminal case against Curney moves forward, the family and neighbors are left to mourn a boy whose final hours remain the subject of dispute even after an arrest.
