Cameron Coney was a great kid.
He played football, adored his three siblings and loved making his friends and family laugh, his aunt said.
But the 12-year-old was fatally shot in his bedroom over the weekend, the latest Atlanta youth whose life was cut short by gun violence.
Coney’s shooting on Saturday makes him at least the fifth child killed in Atlanta since the start of the year, according to data from the police department.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
As the weather warms up, Atlanta’s mayor says keeping children and teenagers safe is a top priority for his administration. Youth violence tends to increase in the spring and summer, experts say, especially when school is out and kids spend more time together in groups.
Mayor Andre Dickens has said officers will ramp up curfew enforcement heading into the summer months. The goal, he said, is to encourage parents to keep better tabs on their kids.
“I want you to know where your child is at all times,” Dickens told TV news cameras after a violent Easter weekend resulted in the deaths of two other young people. “Know where they’re going, where they’re potentially going. Have a cellphone tracker … Make sure you know where they are.”
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Tianah Robinson, 16, died April 4 after she was shot at Piedmont Park. And 3-year-old Armani Lyons was fatally shot hours later at his babysitter’s apartment, according to police. Several other teens were injured in shootings across the city over spring break.
But with the World Cup approaching and the eyes of the world on Atlanta, city leaders hope their youth initiatives will help keep more children out of trouble this year.
Since 2022, Atlanta has spent more than $185 million on youth-centered investments, according to the mayor’s office. Officials credit the city’s summer employment programs and other outreach initiatives with helping drive a 60% decrease in youth violence between 2022 and last year.
Overall, homicides are down in major cities across the nation, data shows. But youth violence still sees spikes, and one local crime professor says the youth programs are little more than “Band-Aids” when it comes to curbing systemic violence.
“We know that crime and violence swings up and swings down over time,” said Volkan Topalli, who chairs the department of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University. “Atlanta has experienced a very steep decline in crime over the last year or so, but so has the entire rest of the country.”
Credit: Branden Camp
Credit: Branden Camp
He said what tends to happen is a series of high-profile shootings draws the attention of the mayor and police chief, who typically issue stern statements and enact policy changes.
Things then settle down, often for months, before the next wave of homicides.
“This is a typical pattern that we’ve seen for many, many years, predating the current mayor,” Topalli said. “After a while it blows over and what you find is that most of these solutions are not really the sustainable and permanent solutions that we need to be looking for.”
Topalli said meaningful investments in community-based violence prevention programs tend to have better long-term results for communities.
Credit: GoFundMe
Credit: GoFundMe
The Trump administration’s decision to pull federal funding for such programs could result in another national uptick in crime, he warned. While homicide statistics are cyclical, Topalli said America’s “breathtaking” proliferation of guns is a major barrier to any meaningful crime reduction efforts.
“There’s just a floor to how much crime reduction you can get when you have all those guns floating around,” he said.
Cameron’s family said the 12-year-old boy was at home with friends when he was shot and killed on Saturday. A 14-year-old has been charged with murder in the middle schooler’s shooting, police said.
“He was the joy of the family,” Cameron’s aunt, Latosha Coney, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. “He enjoyed playing, he enjoyed wrestling with his siblings, he enjoyed being with his mom … He enjoyed being a kid.”
Now his family is struggling to navigate life without the 12-year-old, she said.
Coney, who teaches kindergarten in Atlanta, said she wishes parents were more involved in their children’s lives. That includes knowing where they are and who they’re spending time with.
She also said children shouldn’t have unfettered access to firearms.
Credit: GoFundMe
Credit: GoFundMe
“It hurts to see my nephew’s life get snatched away from him,” Coney said. “If we could hold more parents accountable, maybe that will make a difference.”
Atlanta police say the majority of shootings stem from personal arguments. While detectives can work to solve crimes after the fact, they say there’s only so much they can do to keep people from resorting to gun violence in the first place.
“We saw violence play out in many quadrants of the city,” Assistant Police Chief Carven Tyus told reporters after last week’s spate of shootings. “But a lot of those incidents were beyond the control of the police department.”
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Atlanta police issued 107 curfew violations in 2025, department data shows. Officers issued another 26 through the first three months of the year.
Whether stricter curfew enforcement will impact youth violence remains to be seen, however.
Cameron Coney was shot at home in the middle of the day, his aunt noted. And Tianah Robinson was struck by a stray bullet about 9 p.m., three hours before the midnight curfew would have taken effect.
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