Dante Lamar Daugherty mugshot (DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office) and coming out of Texaco gas station (WSB screenshot)
A 42-year-old father in Georgia parked at a gas station on Labor Day and left his two sons, ages 6 and 7, alone in the car alone where he stored his loaded handgun. Moments later, his 7-year-old was dead and he was subsequently charged in the boy’s death.
Dante Lamar Daugherty was taken into custody early Tuesday morning and charged with one count of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree cruelty to children over the tragic shooting, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to an arrest warrant obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, officers with the DeKalb County Police Department at about 6:30 p.m. on Monday responded to a call regarding a child being shot at a Texaco gas station located in the 1800 block of Rock Chapel Road in Lithonia, which is about 20 miles east of Atlanta.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders reportedly found the 7-year-old victim still inside of the car after suffering a single gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
The victim’s 6-year-old brother was reportedly in the car with him at the time of the fatal shooting. However, investigators have not said whether they believe the victim got hold of the gun and accidentally shot himself, or whether his younger brother accidentally fired the round that took his life. The arrest warrant simply states that Daugherty went into the gas station, leaving his firearm in the car, which was then found by the two children, per the Journal-Constitution.
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Surveillance footage from the gas station obtained by Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB-TV shows Daugherty park his car at pump number three, then he and both of his children get out of the vehicle. A short while later, both of the kids get back in the car and Daugherty goes into the station’s convenience store. While Daugherty is inside the store, the footage shows the 6-year-old child throwing open the passenger-side back door in a panic and running from the car in the direction of a busy intersection.
A few minutes later, Daugherty reportedly exited the store and returned to the vehicle, only to find his son with a gunshot wound to the head. When police arrived on the scene they reportedly described Daugherty as “frantic and distraught.”
The clerk who was working the counter when Daugherty came in spoke to WSB, telling the station that Daugherty was a “regular” customer who had stopped in to play the lottery before his son’s untimely demise.
“It’s ridiculous that a child had to lose his life like this for a father to learn a hard lesson,” a local resident told WSB.
Records show that Daugherty in 2015 pleaded guilty to charges of battery against a family member and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to 24 months of probation. In 2007, he pleaded to one misdemeanor count of loitering for drugs and was given six months probation.
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