Jurors returned lesser felony verdicts after prosecutors argued the 2024 death of 2-year-old Khalil Adams was preventable.
COVINGTON, Ky. — A Kenton County jury has convicted Selena Farrell and Tashaun Adams of reckless homicide after finding that their actions helped lead to the 2024 shooting death of their 2-year-old son, Khalil, who was shot by his 3-year-old brother inside the family’s apartment.
The verdict, returned Friday after a four-day trial, closed one stage of a case that local prosecutors had described as unusual in Kentucky because the fatal shot came from a child while adults controlled the gun and the supervision. Jurors did not convict either parent of murder, the charge prosecutors had pursued by the time the case reached circuit court, but they did find both guilty of reckless homicide. Farrell also was convicted of abandoning a minor. The jury recommended seven years in prison for Farrell and five years for Adams, with final sentencing scheduled for June 29 before Judge Kathy Lape.
The case began on Jan. 22, 2024, when officers and medics were sent to the 2500 block of Warren Street in Covington for a report of a child who had been shot. According to police accounts and later trial testimony, the boys’ parents were asleep in the living room while the children were awake inside the apartment. Prosecutors said the older child got a loaded handgun from a dresser drawer and shot Khalil in the chest. Adams told police he woke up to the sound of the gunshot, found his son bleeding and called 911. As officers approached the building, they met Adams carrying Khalil outside in his arms. First responders treated the boy in the street before an ambulance took him to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where he died. Body camera footage and the criminal complaint became a major part of the case. In those records, the 3-year-old told an officer, “Daddy’s gun is in the drawer.” A forensic interviewer later asked who shot Khalil, and the child answered, “Me.”
Jurors heard prosecutors describe a home where the gun was loaded, had a round in the chamber and was stored in an unlocked dresser in the same area where the boys slept. Rob Sanders, the Kenton County commonwealth’s attorney, said the children had been left unsupervised for as long as two to four hours while the adults slept into the afternoon. Roommates testified that the boys usually woke between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., and prosecutors said the first 911 call came in at 12:45 p.m. An officer who arrived at the apartment testified that the older child was found in a bedroom with an unchanged diaper and feces on him, evidence the state used to argue the case involved neglect as well as unsafe gun storage. Farrell was not at the scene when police arrived. Investigators later said she had an active warrant on a probation violation and was arrested three days later at a hotel in Florence. Court records cited in testimony said she told police she believed Khalil was going to die and wanted to attend his funeral. Some details, including the exact minute the older child found the gun, remain unclear in the public record.
The state’s case drew much of its force from events that happened before Khalil was killed. Court records and testimony showed Adams had been warned twice in 2022 about leaving firearms where children could reach them. In one episode in Erlanger, officers responding to a 911 call found an unsecured gun in a bedroom, and prosecutors said it was the same weapon later used in Khalil’s death. In another, social workers and officers investigating a family-services report found a gun on a counter in Florence within reach of the older boy. After that visit, Adams signed a prevention plan promising a safe and stable environment and proper supervision. Prosecutors used that history to argue that the shooting was not a random accident but the result of known risks that had been ignored. The defense tried to answer that point by saying social workers had visited the family repeatedly without finding a weapon and that Adams believed the dresser storage kept the gun away from the children. His attorney, Joseph Holbrook, told jurors, “He didn’t think it was accessible.”
The criminal charges changed as the case moved through court. When Adams and Farrell were arrested in January 2024, prosecutors announced second-degree manslaughter charges and said they had found no reported Kentucky case with the same basic facts. In March 2024, a grand jury upgraded the case, charging both parents with complicity to murder. Farrell also faced abandonment of a minor and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. Adams also faced hindering apprehension because prosecutors said he helped Farrell avoid arrest after she left the scene. By the time the trial ended on April 17, 2026, jurors rejected the murder theory but still found criminal responsibility. They deliberated for more than three hours before returning the lesser reckless homicide verdicts. Farrell’s additional abandonment conviction remained in place, and the jury’s sentencing recommendation put the mother at seven years and the father at five. Lape will decide the formal sentence at the June 29 hearing, the next major date in a case that has already shifted more than once between charging decision, indictment and trial proof.
The trial also brought out the grief at the center of the case. Adams testified that after hearing the gunshot, he ran to his son and saw Khalil motionless on the floor. “I blame myself for it every day,” he said from the witness stand. Prosecutors did not dispute that both parents suffered a devastating loss, but Sanders told jurors the case was about decisions made long before the shot was fired. “They made lots of mistakes, but they weren’t accidents,” he said. Farrell’s attorney, Katelyn Sanders, asked jurors to treat the shooting as a family tragedy rather than a homicide case, arguing that grief itself was already a lasting punishment. “Every crime is a tragedy, but not every tragedy is a crime,” she said. The family had been living with Adams’ cousin and a friend at the time of the shooting, and that crowded setup became part of the trial’s picture of daily disorder. By the end of the week, jurors were left to weigh two realities that were never far apart in the courtroom: a dead 2-year-old child and the legal question of where parental neglect becomes a felony.
The case now stands with convictions in place but no final sentence yet imposed. Unless the schedule changes, the next public milestone is the June 29 sentencing hearing in Kenton County Circuit Court, where Judge Kathy Lape will decide the punishment for Adams and Farrell.
Author note: Last updated April 21, 2026.