Anaya Zachary, a 14-year-old African American girl, was fatally shot on March 21, 2025, at the playground of her apartment complex in Baytown, Texas, around 4 p.m. According to witness accounts, a verbal altercation earlier that day on the school bus with a 13-year-old male classmate preceded the shooting. Witnesses said the boy went home, dressed in black with a black mask, took a .38 Special revolver from his parents’ unsecured travel bag, returned to the playground, called Anaya by name and shot her four times—twice in the back as she tried to flee and twice after she fell. Anaya was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead; a woman holding her baby was injured by a stray bullet and treated and released.

The suspect was arrested and charged with murder and is in the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center. The parents, Kenneth Coney, 61, and Cassie Coney, 37, were charged with making a firearm accessible to a child after investigators found the revolver stored in a zippered travel bag on the parents’ bedroom floor without locks or safety mechanisms; the teen had reportedly found the weapon weeks earlier while looking for hair trimmers.

Does anyone in Baytown know details about the day’s events or the people involved that could shed more light on what happened?