Calvin Mattheis Devin Cameron holds a poster of her son, Giovonnie Cameron, 13, who was shot and killed by his cousin earlier this summer after finding a gun.

Devin Cameron opened a photo album on a recent evening as she sat in her Milwaukee home.

There's her son, Giovonnie, 13, standing next to his pastor.

Flip.

There he is with his younger sister in an old school portrait.

Flip.

There he is just before his eighth-grade graduation.

Flip.

On a page near the back, two dimes are tucked in a photo sleeve.

The coins were returned to Cameron after authorities investigating Giovonnie's death found them in his pocket. His cousin had brought a gun over, and the two were playing with it when the weapon fired.

"I never thought he would be shot by a gun and his life would be taken," she said.

Giovonnie Cameron was among 10 children age 17 and younger in Milwaukee who were killed in homicides last year, two more victims than in 2014, preliminary data shows.

Half of those children were shot.

Another 54 children were shot and survived last year. That was down from the 76 who were shot and survived in 2014, according to the city's Homicide Review Commission.

The decrease came even though more people suffered nonfatal gunshot wounds in Milwaukee last year, meaning children made up an even smaller percentage of the total number of victims than in 2014.

Giovonnie was shot about 12:30 a.m. July 8 at his home near Lincoln Park. His 13-year-old cousin, J.C., brought a gun to the house and the boys were playing with the gun when it fired, Cameron said.

"Gio loved him and he loved Gio," Cameron said. "They didn't have any reasons for me to even think that J.C. would do it intentionally. I know J.C. did it by mistake."

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Giovonnie, known as Gio, had faith. His mother remembers the pronouncement he made at age 8: "Ma, I'm going to be a pastor. I'm going to preach all over the world and have people listening."

He was close to his siblings — his 18-year-old brother, twin 16-year-old sisters and especially his younger sister, Ahmadreonah Johnson.

He and Ahmadreonah, separated in age by only a year, often took their school portraits together.

"We couldn't afford to have them take the pictures separate," Cameron said. "They didn't mind taking the picture together because they were already close."

In later years, when the family had more money, Gio and his sister continued to take the pictures together because they liked it.

Cameron, a day care instructor, raised her children as a single parent. Giovonnie's father is incarcerated, and the teen had little contact with his side of the family, she said.

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Teens in fatal shooting shared bond, but mothers were wary Giovonnie Cameron, 13, was killed by a single gunshot to the chest fired by a 13-year-old relative with whom he shared a “brotherly” relationship — but who also was described as a “troublemaker.” READ MORE

About a week before the shooting, Cameron found a BB gun in her house and learned it came from her nephew, J.C. She grabbed the BB gun and took Gio and J.C. to the river near N. 27th St. and W. Villard Ave. She tossed the weapon in the water. J.C., she recalled, was upset.

His family often called him J.C. as a nickname. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is not naming him because he was charged as a juvenile.

The next day, she said, Gio brought his cousin to her to apologize.

"You can't play with guns," Cameron remembers telling them. "Guns only kill, steal and destroy."

J.C. often would come to her house when he was supposed to be going to his grandmother's house. He had a reputation as a bit of a "troublemaker," according to court records. Shortly after the Fourth of July, Cameron told J.C. not to come over.

Around the same time, 14-year-old Tariq Akbar was shot and killed after the lakefront fireworks display. Giovonnie knew Tariq because their older brothers were friends.

After attending Tariq's vigil, Giovonnie called his brother, Christopher Groves, who was away from home after being arrested.

"It was crazy, bro, all your guys were there," Gio told him.

It was the last time they spoke. Groves was released from custody hours after his brother was shot. Although their house was officially a crime scene, Groves slipped back inside that first night. He slept near the bathroom door — as close he could get to the area where his wounded brother had been lying.

"Something just told me to stay there one night to see if I was going to ever hear him again," he said.

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The night of the shooting, Gio was home with his 16-year-old twin sisters. Cameron had decided to stay at her fiancé's home.

Mark Hoffman Police tape marks the scene where 13-year-old Giovonnie Cameron was shot and killed near Lincoln Park.

J.C. later told investigators he found a gun and took it to Giovonnie's home. According to court records, J.C. said the two were "playing with the gun" when he pulled the trigger and the gun fired.

Giovonnie fell, and J.C. ran away because he was afraid, he later told his mother, according to those records.

It's the running away part that haunts Cameron.

"I never taught Gio to leave someone helpless," she said. "You always help whenever you can, even if it's your fault.

"When my nephew didn't do that, it made me feel very angry."

Giovonnie's sisters, one of whom was pregnant, were upstairs sleeping when they heard a loud boom. Gio came upstairs, holding his stomach and bleeding heavily. He told them J.C. shot him. One of his sisters ran to a neighbor's house for help. She called 911, then their mother.

When Cameron arrived, yellow crime scene tape surrounded the house. She asked a firefighter what was going on. He responded by asking her questions, including her son's name. Cameron grew frustrated and remembers yelling Gio's name at the firefighter and him yelling back that her son was dead.

"It hurt," she said. "I was straight judged right away, like I was just a stupid mom that left her kids alone ... not able to watch themselves."

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Devin Cameron talks about her son Giovonnie Cameron and shows a photo and an honorary plaque by the Warning Summer Basketball League. The 13-year-old was shot and killed by his cousin earlier this summer after finding a gun. CALVIN MATTHEIS

J.C.'s mother found him the morning of July 9 in a park and persuaded him to come to another relative's house, where she contacted police and officers arrested him, according to court documents.

J.C. was charged as a juvenile with second-degree reckless homicide and possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18. The Journal Sentinel was granted access to J.C.'s case file in July and reviewed the delinquency petition charging J.C. When a reporter sought to review the file again last month to learn the case's outcome, a judge denied the request.

Cameron says J.C. was sent to Lincoln Hills School for Boys, a state youth prison about 30 miles north of Wausau. She could only bring herself to go to one court hearing.

"It was a dark day," she said. "When I saw J.C., I saw that he wasn't the same mentally."

Cameron hasn't spoken to her nephew, who wrote her a letter of apology, but said she would like to in the future and tell him he isn't alone.

"I would tell him that he has to do right from this point on," she said. "It would hurt me if he grew up to want to rob, steal and kill, but if he grew up to graduate out of high school, to get a college education and be somebody, then I would be so proud."

And after she says all that, she would ask him one question about the night her son died.

"What happened?"

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The photo album has many photos of Gio with his family and friends.

It also includes an ultrasound image of his niece.

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His sister, Marcia Groves, who saw the aftermath of the shooting, was placed under special care during her pregnancy. After Gio died, she couldn't eat and was stressed.

"The reason we put her in here," Cameron said with the album open on her lap, "is because we believe that with death comes life."

Cameron's granddaughter was born on Thanksgiving Day.

Her name is Giovonna.

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