Police said Steven Lamont Phillips fell asleep after playing with the boy, then woke to a gunshot inside the family home on Qualynn Drive.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Nashville man is charged with criminal homicide after police said his 6-year-old son suffered a gunshot wound to the head on March 28 inside a home where the father had fallen asleep with a .380 pistol in his pocket.
The case quickly widened beyond a single state charge. Police first booked Steven Lamont Phillips, 56, on allegations of aggravated child neglect and unlawful gun possession by a convicted felon after the boy was taken to a hospital in extremely critical condition. After the child died late March 30, Nashville police said a criminal homicide warrant was issued April 1. Federal prosecutors then filed a separate felon-in-possession case on April 2, putting Phillips at the center of parallel state and federal proceedings over a shooting that authorities say began with an unsecured handgun and ended with a child’s death.
Police said the shooting happened Saturday afternoon, March 28, at a home in the 3100 block of Qualynn Drive in Nashville. According to police statements and court records described in local reports, Phillips had been caring for his son while another adult relative was inside the home. Investigators said Phillips told them he had been outside doing yard work when he found a handgun in a ditch or brush area. Instead of reporting it, he put the pistol in his pocket and went back indoors. He then played with the child in the living room and eventually fell asleep on the floor. Phillips told detectives he woke to the sound of a gunshot and saw a muzzle flash. He then yelled for a relative to call 911. When officers arrived, they recovered the gun from the living room floor. Emergency crews took the boy, later publicly identified by relatives as Steven Lamont Ricks, to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.
In the first hours after the shooting, police said the child was in extremely critical condition and doctors considered his injuries unsurvivable. By April 1, Nashville police announced that he had died late Monday afternoon. The public record lays out the broad sequence of events, but several details remain unclear. Authorities have not publicly said exactly how the child gained control of the weapon, whether the gun shifted or fell from Phillips’ pocket before it discharged, or how long the pistol had been inside the home before the shot was fired. Investigators also have not publicly described whether the gun was loaded when Phillips said he found it outdoors or whether it had been reported stolen. What police have said is that Phillips, after being advised of his rights, repeated that he found the firearm that morning, carried it inside and later awoke to the gunshot. Their statements do not describe any intruder, struggle or outside threat. The account, as released by police and prosecutors, turns on Phillips’ decision to keep a gun he was barred from having and then fall asleep with it during time with his son.
That legal ban is a major part of the case. Nashville police said Phillips was already a convicted felon and on probation for a March 12 attempted theft conviction when the shooting happened. Police and federal prosecutors also pointed to earlier convictions for aggravated robbery and unlawful gun possession. In the federal complaint filed April 2, prosecutors identified the weapon as a Kel-Tec CNC Inc. model P3AT .380 auto caliber pistol and said Phillips could not lawfully possess it because of his felony record. The same filing said officers found the child, identified as S.R. in federal papers, unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head. The overlap between the father’s criminal history and the child’s death helps explain why the case moved so fast from a local neglect and gun case into a homicide investigation with federal firearms charges. It also gives prosecutors two tracks to pursue. One case focuses on the death of the child under Tennessee law. The other focuses on the gun alone, regardless of how the state homicide case is ultimately resolved.
The state case remains in an early procedural stage. Nashville police said a judicial commissioner set bond at $75,000 when Phillips was first booked on the neglect and felon-in-possession counts. After the boy died, police said Youth Services Division detectives took the lead in the upgraded homicide investigation. Public releases as of Friday did not spell out a trial date or a full schedule of future hearings on the homicide allegation, and authorities have not yet publicly detailed whether prosecutors will seek an indictment or proceed first through preliminary court steps. The federal case is also just beginning. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee announced April 2 that Phillips had been charged with possession of a weapon by a previously convicted felon for his role in the death of his son. Federal prosecutors said that count carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if he is convicted. As in any criminal case, the filings are accusations, and Phillips is presumed innocent unless prosecutors prove the charges in court.
The child’s family has filled in the human details that are mostly absent from court papers. Relatives identified the boy as Steven Lamont Ricks and said everyone called him Junebug. In interviews and a fundraiser created after his death, family members said he was autistic, loved noodles, dinosaurs and his tablet, and was especially close to his grandmother. His sister, Jaylia Hurtch, told local television that he was the youngest of 12 children and the “baby of the family,” a child whose smile brightened a room. Federal prosecutors, describing the case from the government’s side, called the death of a child “every parent’s nightmare” and said felons with guns present an inherent danger. Those public reactions, one from grieving relatives and one from law enforcement, frame the same event from different ends of the system. For the family, the case is the loss of Junebug. For police and prosecutors, it is an investigation into how a prohibited person kept a loaded handgun close enough for a small child to reach it inside a living room on a Saturday afternoon.
As of Friday, Phillips faces a state criminal homicide case and a separate federal firearms case, while investigators have not publicly answered several remaining questions about the gun’s path from a ditch to the home. The next public milestone is expected to be his first court appearances on the upgraded homicide and federal charges.
Author note: Last updated April 3, 2026.