‘He Made Me A Strong Woman’: Mother Of Boy Killed At Choctaw Game Speaks Out

The mother of Cordea Carter is speaking out for the first time since her son was killed at the Del City Choctaw game Friday night.

“He made me a strong woman,” said Cordea Carter’s mother Janae Wright. “He could walk into a room and light everybody up with a joke and a smile.” 

Surrounded by family on Wednesday, Janae is drawing on that strength just to get through the days following the death of her son, 16-year-old Cordea Carter.

“My son was funny, he liked to get fly, he liked to crack jokes, he liked to work,” she said. “Just was so much life.”

A life cut short following a shooting during the third quarter of the Del City football game against Choctaw Friday night. Cordea was a student at Midwest City High School and attended the game on Friday with his family to support his brother and cousins who are Choctaw football players. 

Investigators say the suspects approached Cordea, a fight broke out and then shots were fired. The family says it all happened in front of Cordea’s sister and cousins.

“All I know is that when they were getting ready to shoot, my son told them to run and got them out of the way and my son got shot,” Janae said.

“I was trying to tell him not to die, hold his hand and tell him to stay awake and stuff and it just hurt my heart that he had to die right in front of us,” said Coniyah Wright, Cordea Carter’s Sister.

Now the family wants answers.

“Why did y'all walk right past him when he was bleeding out and went to everybody else?,” said JaMari Wilson, Cordea Carter’s Sister.

The family says Cordea died at the stadium in his grandmother’s arms.        

“All the questions for me are, did my son have a gun or stereotyping my son as a gang member? Well what about the questions of my son bleeding out at the game and no one helping him?,” she said. “The ball has been dropped. The ball was dropped, and my son was a child, so he deserved to have got help.”