‘He didn’t have to shoot him,’ Atlanta mother says after teen dies in burglary

On Jan. 9, LaDunte “Nunk” Momon was shot and killed as he tried to leave a Union City street, according to police. Sean Paul Cook had seen someone try to break into his Dodge Ram pickup truck, according to the arrest warrant. Without even getting dressed, Cook ran out of a Bentley Drive home in the early-morning hours and began shooting, striking the teenager in the front seat of a friend’s car. Cook’s video camera captured his actions, according to police.

After her son was shot, Shawndrica Momon said he was driven about 15 miles to Boulder Park Drive, just outside of I-285 near Adamsville. “Nunk” was later found dead in the passenger seat of a white Tesla Model Y. City of Atlanta homicide detectives began the investigation before alerting Union City police of the teen’s death.

“They left him right there,” Momon said.

A sibling of one of her son’s friends called her mother to say Nunk had been shot, Momon said.

“I just went to hollering and screaming from there,” she said.

Her son didn’t have the chance to receive medical care. Momon had thought her son was hanging out with friends, never imagining he would be killed doing the exact thing she had warned her children about: stealing from others.

“I let them know y’all can’t go around breaking into people’s houses, because people work hard for their things and they will hurt you,” Momon said.

It was the second time in recent weeks that gun violence had left her family grieving. A third family member was killed several years ago, too. There were no arrests in either case.

On New Year’s Eve, 28-year-old Sierra O’Neal was shot to death at an apartment complex in northwest Atlanta, according to police. O’Neal was her daughter’s half-sister, with the two sharing the same father, Momon said.

Atlanta officers were called around 8:30 a.m. that night to the Reserve at Hollywood Apartments on Hollywood Road in the Scotts Crossing neighborhood. When officers arrived, they found O’Neal dead with a gunshot wound to the head inside a third-floor apartment, police said.

Police later said the killing was a “justifiable homicide” that happened during an argument with another woman over a man.

In June 2021, Corey Oliver was shot to death at his birthday party the day he turned 39 years old. Oliver was her youngest son’s father, Momon said.

Oliver was killed at the Country Oaks apartments in the 300 block of Fairburn Road just after noon, according to Atlanta police. Investigators questioned a suspect, but no charges were filed, Momon said.

In her son’s death, charges were filed two weeks later. Cook was charged with voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, his warrants state.

“Accused did cause the death of another human being under circumstances which would otherwise be murder and if he acts solely as the result of a sudden, violent and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person,” Cook’s warrant states.

On Jan. 24, the day before his 37th birthday, Cook was booked into the Fulton County jail, records show. Three days later, he was released from jail on $125,000 bond, according to booking records.

Momon said her son never should have been committing crimes like burglary. She just wishes he could have learned a lesson, rather than being killed.

“Yes, my son was wrong. He was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing,” she said. “But he (Cook) could have acknowledged them. He didn’t have to shoot him.”