How TikTok led cops to alleged killers of 16-year-old boy who was found dead hanging out of a moving vehicle?
A couple spotted Key’mydre Anderson hanging out of the car window of a moving car before the 16-year-old crashed to the pavement.
They shrouded the boy in their coats and jackets and offered prayers as he lay half-naked and covered in grazes on the floor of Clay Mathis Road, in Mesquite, Texas, on January 22, 2022.
“The witness says he was dangling,” Anderson’s mother Shenika told local news WFAA at the time. “My baby was holding on. He didn’t want to go.”
Anderson was pronounced dead soon after paramedics rushed him to a local hospital.
Authorities initially believed the victim was involved in a car accident, before they noticed a “puncture wound” to his chest.
Then the gravity of the situation became clear: he had been shot and thrown from a moving car, just a mile from his home.
Four people, including three teens and one of their mothers, were charged with his death after investigators gleaned intel from their TikTok and Instagram activity.
One of the alleged killers, Johnathan Pyle, 21, went to trial last week at a Dallas County courthouse charged with capital murder. If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.
Anderson was described as a hardworking student at John Horn High School, whom his family affectionately nicknamed “Ears”.
The sophomore had an after-school job as a cook at a Sonic Drive-In fast food restaurant to help his single mother buy groceries and support his five younger siblings.
After finishing a shift at the restaurant on January 22, 2022, Anderson jumped into the shower and then met with his grandmother Tonya Palmer to buy groceries.
Later that day, between 6:30 p.m. and 6:45 p.m, Anderson got into a black Honda Civic.
Shenika said she had seen the vehicle outside her house before, and that her son knew the individual inside.
But there was a twist: Anderson had been communicating with one or more of the defendants and had gotten into the vehicle to allegedly purchase a firearm, authorities said.
