Nearly two years after 8-year-old girl Jenesis Dockery was shot and killed while at her babysitter’s house in Cumberland County, her family has filed a lawsuit against the babysitter and the gun’s owner.
Dockery’s family and their attorneys announced the lawsuit at a press conference held outside the Cumberland County Courthouse on Tuesday. The suit was filed in Cumberland County Superior Court the same day. The Dockery family is seeking financial damages to address Jenesis’ medical and funeral expenses, as well as “compensation for pain and suffering” that Jenesis endured.
“Our family has been changed forever by a tragedy that was very well preventable — irresponsibility, negligence,” Jenesis’ father Fon Dockery said. “We stand here today to own up to our human responsibility, our parental responsibility, to ask for justice, transparency for the life, the light and the advocacy of Jenesis Dockery.”
Dockery died at Cape Fear Valley Hospital on July 27, 2023, two days after allegedly being shot by the 11-year-old son of her babysitter at the time, Chrystle Michael, while at Michael’s home. The 11-year-old, identified in the lawsuit as C.B., had stolen a gun that belonged to his grandfather, Thomas Michael, according to the lawsuit.
“Jenesis suffered an unintentional or accidental gunshot wound to her head after the weapon fell from [the] closet or while C.B. was handling the weapon,” the complaint states. It states that the boy had a “strong interest in firearms” and had a “propensity for violence.”
The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office had detained the 11-year-old boy in August 2023 and had asked the N.C. Department of Public Safety, which handles juvenile justice cases, to charge the suspect with manslaughter and firearm theft. C.B. was charged with involuntary manslaughter and larceny of two firearms, the family’s attorney Harry Daniels told reporters on Tuesday. But the charges did not result in the child’s incarceration or lasting punitive measures, Daniels said.
“No arrest was made for the adults,” Daniels said. “The child who committed the act is back at home like nothing happened.”
The Dockery family is raising awareness for children who lost their lives due to the negligence of adults who left firearms within reach of children. Daniels read aloud from the lawsuit the names of several such recent child victims of gun violence in North Carolina, including a 1-year-old in High Point who was shot and killed by a child younger than 10 years old in November 2024.
Citing a 2023 report from the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force, Daniels said children in North Carolina in 2021 were 51% more likely to die from gun violence than children in the rest of the country.
“This continues to happen every single day,” Daniels said. “We ask for transparency and accountability, and this is what this lawsuit brings.”
The Dockery family has been working to enact legislation at the state level that would hold negligent gun owners responsible for fatalities and injuries that happen with the use of their guns. State lawmakers, including State Sen. Val Applewhite (D-19), filed Senate Bill 161 on Feb. 25, known as the “The Jenesis Firearm Accountability Act.” The bill would require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms within 48 hours of discovering a missing gun. It would also make owners of a missing firearm liable for civil damages and potentially criminal charges equivalent to the offense committed with the unreported lost gun.
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608. This story was made possible by donations from readers like you to CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
