Two Men Who Killed Nine-Year-Old North Carolina Boy in 2019 Are Sentenced to Life in Prison

Z’yon Person. (PHOTO: GOFUNDME)

Two North Carolina men learned this week that they’ll be spending the rest of their lives in federal prison for the 2019 killing of 9-year-old Z’yon Person, PEOPLE confirms.

According to a statement from the Department of Justice, the life sentences were meted out Tuesday to 27-year-old Antonio Nathaniel Davenport, Jr., and Derrick Lamont Dixon, Jr., 30.

Both, the statement says, were members of the Eight Trey Gangster Crips criminal street gang.

“Davenport was also a member of the Durham-based rap music group ’83 Babies,’ so named for the ‘Eight Trey’ Gangster Crips,” the statement continues. “The rap group promoted the gang, rapping about gang life, gun violence, and drug distribution.”

The statement alleges that Z’yon was killed when Davenport — seeking revenge against a rival gang, whose members had assaulted him days earlier — mistook the car he was being driven in for the car owned by one of his attackers.

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SOURCE: PEOPLE, Chris Harris