Mother wants justice after 15-year-old shot, killed: ‘He wasn’t a threat’

CLARKSDALE, Miss. (WMC) - Family of Cornelius “CJ” McGhee said they feel left in the dark after the 15-year-old was shot and killed Monday night.

According to the Clarksdale Police Department, the shooter was a former employee of the department. They tell Action News 5 the investigation was turned over to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

“We were supposed to have somebody from MBI come at noon,” McGhee’s mother Jaqueline Rash told Action News 5. “But it’s 2:00 and we haven’t heard from them still.”

Instead, Rash told Action News 5 she’s only gotten bits and pieces from eyewitnesses.

She said it was one of her teenage sons friends who reached out initially to tell her CJ was laying lifeless in his backyard.

When she got to the scene, she said the friend told her that her son was at the home of a girl who lived next door. The friend went on to explain to Rash that the father of the girl came home, became upset and McGhee fled the home.

Rash said her son’s friend said that’s when the father shot the 15-year-old in the leg and then in the back.

“I was trying to tell [responding officers] that the little boy who lived there just called me and told me my baby was in the backyard dead,” Rash said. “They still wouldn’t let me go back there and see him. They were just kept saying ‘we can’t tell you nothing right now.’”

Rash told Action News 5 that Tuesday evening she had seen authorities circling her home several times throughout the day, yet none of them had stopped to give her an update.

“My sons weighs all of 116 pounds,” Rash said. “He wasn’t a threat to nobody. We just want answers and we want justice.”

We took action and reached out to MBI and they told our newsroom the shooting is not being investigated as an officer-involved shooting and no arrests have been made yet.

The MBI report lists the shooter as Andrew Bankhead. He does not currently face any charges in the shooting.

The shooting came just one day after 14 were shot in two connected shootings in Clarksdale, but police would not say if this shooting is related to those.

Click here to sign up for our newsletter!

Click here to report a spelling or grammar error. Please include the headline.

Copyright 2023 WMC. All rights reserved.