WILSON, N.C. — A family is grieving for a 5-year-old boy who was shot and killed in North Carolina.
Police say Cannon Hinnant didn’t die from a stray bullet or a neglected firearm.
They say a neighbor, 25-year-old Darius Sessoms, walked up to the child while he was playing outside with his siblings and shot him in the head.
"My baby didn't deserve this,” Cannon’s mother Bonny Waddell said. “He had the biggest smile, the biggest eyes."
Waddell said she lost a piece of her heart.
"We lost a big piece of our family. We all. He changed all of our lives. He touched everybody that he knew,” she said.
It’s a day too hard to recount, not only for her, but for Cannon’s two sister and aunt who witnessed the shooting.
"This man took my girls when he took my baby. They know he's in a better place,” Waddell said.
Sessoms is in jail and charged with the first-degree murder of Cannon, but family and friends say there’s still justice they want to see.
"I want death penalty and I'm gonna seek it,” Waddell said.
"I agree with Cannon's mother that we are going to seek the death penalty,” Cannon’s father Austin Hinnant said.
With a GoFundMe that is over $700,000 as of Monday afternoon, they lan to remember Cannon the best way they know how.
"We've discussed a memorial park for cannon where kids can go and ride their bikes because he loved that so much,” Cannon’s grandmother Gwen Hinnant said.
While grief and questions weigh on Waddell’s heart, she said she knows there’s a greater plan.
"Cannon's gonna change this world,” she said.