Youth Services detectives at 4 a.m. today charged 14-year-old Ronald Cornelius Tate with criminal homicide for Thursday night’s shooting death of eleven-year-old Akeem Ford inside Tate’s home at 410-B 37th Avenue North.
Ford and his 13-year-old brother, who live on Elkins Avenue, were visiting the Tate residence when the shooting occurred.
The investigation to this point shows that Akeem Ford, who was carrying an unloaded pistol, was pretending to rob the other teens. Tate had a 12-gauge shotgun and claims it unintentionally discharged. Ford was hit in the chest at close range and died at the scene.
Immediately after the shooting, which occurred shortly after 9 p.m., Tate, by his later admission, fled the home with the shotgun and a loaded rifle. He hid the weapons at the side of a nearby alley and returned to the house. Upon police arrival, Tate, and even the victim’s 13-year-old brother, claimed that Akeem Ford was the victim of a drive-by shooting that occurred blocks from the home and that the two carried him to the house. The evidence at the scene did not support that contention and the teens ultimately changed their stories during questioning by Detective Faye Okert at police headquarters.
Also in the residence at the time of the shooting were Tate’s 16-year-old brother and ten-year-old sister. They claim not to have witnessed the shooting.
The mother of the Tate children works the evening shift at a health care facility and was not home when Ford was killed. She told detectives that she had no knowledge of her sons keeping a shotgun and rifle inside the home.
It is not clear where or when Ford got the unloaded pistol he was carrying.
Ronald Tate
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