“He had a lot of life in front of him,” Demarcus Shirley’s great-uncle said of the late teenager
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A teenage boy and an adult man were killed after multiple shots were fired into a Georgia home from the outside.
On Thursday morning, July 2, Demarcus Shirley, 13, and Chauncey Newman, 45, were killed after a gunman or group of gunmen fired dozens of shots into a home on Rockcliff Road, the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to PEOPLE.
Shirley was among several young boys who were at the home for a sleepover, the sheriff’s office said. None of the other people inside the home were injured.
“He seemed eager to learn. Kind of athletic,” Shirley’s great-uncle, Gregory Carthon, told Atlanta News First of the late teenager. “He had a lot of life in front of him.”
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The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to PEOPLE that 21-year-old Keyshun Webb was taken into custody on Tuesday, July 7, in connection with the shooting.
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He is being held without bond at the DeKalb County Jail and has been charged with two counts of murder, eight counts of aggravated assault with a weapon and one count of cruelty to animals.
According to arrest warrants obtained by Atlanta News First, video footage indicates that Webb was allegedly involved in a separate drive-by shooting on that same day. Shell casings at both scenes matched, and gang involvement was determined to be “likely.”
While no other suspects have been identified, the shootings allegedly involved two vehicles and four male suspects.
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Following the tragedy, two young boys, Larenzo Pinkins and Larry Bell-Ware, told 11 Alive that they were asleep inside the Rockcliff Road home when the shooting occurred.
“We had come upstairs, and I had seen him, and I tried to grab him, and he was dead, Demarcus,” Pinkins recalled. “I’m happy it wasn’t me. I’m happy I wasn’t hit, but it should’ve been me, though, before Demarcus. Demarcus had too much life to live. He died too young.”
Bell-Ware added: “He wasn’t in the streets at all. He’s just a funny little kid who liked to run around and play like a normal little kid.”
Bell-Ware also remembered Newman as a man who would always let kids come over “when they had nowhere to go.”
“Any kids who were ever just walking around and didn’t have anywhere to go, they could just come here,” he said. “He was just a good person in general.”