Nashville Police officers have charged five children with criminal homicide following the shooting of a 24-year-old musician outside his house on Thursday.
Police say the children shot and killed Kyle Yorlets, the lead singer in rock band Carverton, after he refused to give them the keys to his car. They had already stolen his wallet.
The children — three girls and two boys, ages 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 — have been charged as juveniles with homicide.
Police say that the five kids were driving in a stolen red Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck in the alley behind Yorlets’s home in the College Heights/Clifton neighborhood.
Yorlets was outside his house when the children spoke with him, stole his wallet, and demanded that he give them the keys to his vehicle. When he refused, he was shot, said police.
The Belmont University graduate made it back inside his house, where a housemate found him. He was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.
On Thursday evening, police traced the stolen pickup truck to a West Nashville Walmart, where all five children were arrested. They had a stolen loaded 9 mm pistol, and a second stolen gun was found inside the store.
Yorlets's Carverton bandmates released a statement on Facebook about the singer's death:
On February 7, 2019 we lost our brother, best friend, and bandmate Kyle Yorlets. We are in a state of shock and are having to grasp the reality that is now in front of us. We are heartbroken. Our condolences for his family and loved ones and all the lives that he touched. We will never forget Kyle, and though he is gone too soon his legacy is here to stay.
CORRECTION
Yorlets is a graduate of Belmont University, which was misidentified as Belmont College in an earlier version of this story.