A Michigan family is mourning the tragic shooting death of their 16-year-old son, who died on Tuesday during a game of Russian roulette.
Antonio O’Neill was playing the dangerous game at a home in East Detroit, with a group of friends who had skipped school. The teen’s death comes just two months after another 16-year-old was killed playing a version of the deadly game with friends near Grand Rapids.
Local media reported that O’Neill’s mother believed he was at school but instead the boy was gathered with friends at a home in his neighborhood. The game went terribly wrong and O’Neill shot himself in the neck at around 10:45am on Tuesday. After the shooting, one of the teens in the group ran off but later returned to the home and turned himself into police.
Police alerted the boy’s mother of his death on Tuesday, while she was at work at the Detroit Public Schools, and the family is in shock over the tragedy. O’Neill, who lived with his parents, sister and two brothers, was described as a good kid who fell in with the wrong crowd.
‘He was a very good kid … I guess he just got into the hands of the wrong crowd,’ the victim’s cousin, Meda Winfield, told WXYZ. ‘His mom is down there just, you know, she’s hurt,’ she said. ‘What mom wouldn’t be, to get called from work, and to know that I’m thinking my son’s at school, and now he’s dead.’
