Dallas police are investigating why a 15-year-old boy was found shot to death on the basketball court of Robert L. Thornton Elementary Saturday morning.
Mikel Phillips was identified as the victim Saturday by his family and on Monday by police.
Neighbors in Singing Hills told police they heard gunshots about 8 p.m. Friday night. Dallas police responded and found Phillips gravely wounded — he was pronounced deceased by paramedics soon after.
Phillips mother, Shamekia White, said he was her middle child. She says he'd been a football quarterback and good student. He was most recently enrolled in Anna ISD, though she says he stopped attending after a football injury.
"He was just a 15-year-old kid trying to find himself. He may have been out here doing what other teenagers do, but at the end of the day, he was raised by a family that loved him," White said.
White says there were men in the neighborhood who'd threatened her son. She believes they're the ones responsible for his death.
"I have to bury my son in the next couple of days. I have to find a funeral home to come pick my son's body up. The morgue won't even let me see my son because of what they did to him. But what I can tell you, there were over 20 bullets out there on those school grounds. So, they shot my son up. He was 15. That's overkill," White said.
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White said she and her son grew up in Singing Hills and as children attended the same elementary school where his body was found.
"He was just laying out there like he was nobody. He was just lying there," said White.
Dallas police are asking anyone with information to contact Detective Heathcote with the Homicide Unit at 214-671-4310.
