5-year-old boy shot, killed by neighbor while playing in front yard, authorities say

WILSON, North Carolina – Investigators are still searching for a motive in the murder of a 5-year-old boy shot to death at point-blank range as he played in the yard of his father's Wilson, North Carolina home.

Witnesses told police Cannon Hinnant was riding a bike outside his father's home when a neighbor walked up to him and shot him in the head.

"They were just playing in the yard like any other day," Austin Hinnant said Thursday of Cannon and his 8- and 7-year-old sisters.

Hinnant said he heard a gunshot as his fiancée walked into the house at about 5:30 p.m.

"The first thing that went through my mind was maybe he just fell off his bike," he said. "The closer I got to him, the more I realized it was something far more serious."

Darrius Sessoms, 25, was charged with first-degree murder in Cannon's death and was arrested Monday in Goldsboro.

Sessoms lives next door to Cannon’s father, and a neighbor said that the two men had dinner together Saturday night and that Sessoms was at his neighbor’s home earlier Sunday.

Read the full story at WRAL.com.


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