The parents of the teen who allegedly admitted to killing 14-year-old Anaya Zachary in Baytown have been charged with providing access to the weapon used in the shooting.
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Kenneth Coney, 61, and Cassie Coney, 37, have both been charged with making a firearm accessible to a child, a misdemeanor. At the time of this writing, they are not in police custody.
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Authorities are arguing that the parents did not secure the gun in a way that prevented their 14-year-old son from accessing it and using it in the tragic attack.
“I miss her so much. It’s not a day go by that I don’t cry,” Zachary’s godmother, Sonya Roberts Standford, said.
The incident happened on March 21. The Coneys’ son, who attended Baytown Junior High School and has not been identified because he’s a juvenile, was riding home on the school bus when he got into an argument with Zachary. The altercation escalated, and the teen threatened to kill her, according to court records.
After being dropped off at home, he entered his parents’ bedroom and retrieved a black Taurus .38 special revolver that he knew his parents kept in a travel bag on the floor near their bed, records state. He told authorities that he became aware of the gun’s location roughly three weeks before the murder while he was searching their room for hair trimmers.
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After taking the gun, he allegedly went to an apartment complex in Baytown and shot Zachary in the chest and abdomen, before returning home and placing the weapon back in the bedside bag.
“He went home put on all black, put on a black mask and came back and called my baby’s name and he shot my baby four times,” Standford said after the shooting in March.
Later that day, officials obtained a search warrant of the Coneys’ home, where the revolver was quickly discovered in the bag. There was no lock found on the bag, and the single zipper made it readily accessible to the teen.
The teen admitted to shooting Zachary to authorities, and he was charged with murder.
The day after the shooting, officials attempted to speak to both parents, but they refused to provide a statement. They also refused to talk to case workers with Child Protective Services.
CPS employees informed officers that the Coneys had retained an attorney.
“We’ve got to make sure that adults know they are responsible for securely storing their firearms so that children and teenagers or individuals in crisis at any age cannot easily access firearms and use them to harm themselves or others,” said Texas Gun Sense executive director Nicole Golden. “It’s incredibly tragic and it’s sadly, it is not the first time I’ve heard a story like this.”
She urged gun owners to store them unloaded and locked away, separately from any ammunition.
Standford hopes other families will take notice.
“Guns are not any kind of toy that a child should be playing with,” Standford said.
In a phone call with KPRC 2’s Bryce Newberry, she said she wants justice and believes the parents were just as much at fault as their son was.
“You left the gun where the baby could get his hands on it, so somebody else has to get charged besides that baby,” Stanford said. “I forgive him. I forgive his parents. But sometime in life, we have to pay for things that our children do that we do not like what they do. So therefore, my thing is, God, just let justice come for Anaya.”
Since the murder, Standford said she hasn’t heard anything from the boy’s family.
“If you would have been decent parents and had your gun locked away where he couldn’t have gotten his hands on it, none of this would have taken place,” she said.
