A 15-year-old boy died after a meeting to sell jeans, and the accused shooter is also a juvenile.
RALEIGH, N.C. — The father of a 15-year-old Raleigh boy fatally shot inside his home said Monday that the killing began with a plan to sell a pair of jeans and ended within minutes with his only child dead and another teen facing a juvenile case.
The account has drawn attention because it joins a routine teen exchange, home surveillance footage and a juvenile investigation whose key details are still largely sealed from public view. Police said officers were called around 11:50 a.m. Friday to Springshire Court, where they found a juvenile male suffering from a gunshot wound. The boy later died, and family members identified him as Cayden. Authorities said a juvenile suspect was in custody, and later reporting showed that a juvenile petition had been filed against the teen accused in the shooting.
CJ Alston said he keeps replaying the warning he gave his son the night before the shooting. Cayden had been on punishment, Alston said, and was not supposed to have anyone over at the house. By Friday morning, that rule had already broken down. Alston said two boys came to the home in the 1400 block of Springshire Court because Cayden was trying to sell a pair of jeans. What should have been a simple exchange turned into a confrontation, Alston said, when the boys refused to pay and Cayden refused to hand over the jeans without payment. “They can’t come back over here. You can’t have no company,” Alston said he had told his son the night before. Instead, he said, one of the visitors shot Cayden inside the house.
Alston said he later reviewed footage from the family’s Ring doorbell camera and came away convinced the encounter was headed toward trouble before anyone went inside. He said the teens appeared unusually intent on getting into the house and moved around outside in a way that raised alarms once he watched it back. He said they were asking which room belonged to Cayden and circling toward the back of the home. Alston said the timestamps show a compressed, brutal timeline: the boys arrived at 11:36 a.m., and police were there by 11:51 a.m. That leaves only a narrow window for the conversation, the conflict and the gunfire. Police have not publicly described what they believe happened inside step by step, so the father’s review of the video now fills many of the gaps in the public record.
The emergency response quickly transformed the block. Local television video from Friday showed numerous Raleigh police vehicles on the cul-de-sac, officers searching outside and a home marked off with police tape. A neighbor told WRAL the street is usually quiet and said the scale of the response stood out. Publicly, Raleigh police have kept their statements narrow, confirming the shooting, the death of a juvenile victim and the custody of a juvenile suspect. They have not publicly identified the accused, disclosed whether the teens had a longer-running dispute, or said whether the shooting was planned in advance. Those unknowns matter because they could shape how the case proceeds and how investigators describe motive, intent and any role played by the second boy who was reportedly present.
For now, the legal path is defined more by what is hidden than what is known. Juvenile proceedings in North Carolina are often closed, and the filing of a juvenile petition signals the start of a case without opening the same public paper trail seen in adult felony prosecutions. That means there was still no public accounting Monday of the exact allegation listed in the petition, no full probable-cause narrative released through court records in news reports, and no public hearing date widely reported. Investigators also had not announced whether additional charges could follow or whether any effort would be made to transfer the case to adult court. Until then, the public story is split between official confirmation of a homicide investigation and the family’s detailed account of how a deal over clothing became a killing.
Alston’s grief gave the story its sharpest details. He said he believes Cayden tried to move through the house after the shooting, leaving blood in the bathroom, closet and kitchen. That image, more than the argument over jeans, captured the cruelty of the final minutes. The father said what he misses most is not one big milestone but the daily presence of his son — his face, his voice and the ordinary talk that filled the home before Friday. He also used his interview to speak broadly about the easy access and quick use of guns among young people. In his telling, the hardest truth is how little separated an everyday teen interaction from irreversible loss.
By late Monday, police had confirmed the death, a juvenile suspect remained the focus of the case, and the petition process was underway. The next public developments are likely to come from any police update, juvenile court action or family announcement about Cayden’s memorial arrangements.
Author note: Last updated March 24, 2026.