Three weeks before eight-year-old Liquarry Jefferson was shot to death by another child with his older brother’s handgun, his mother acknowledged the unregistered firearm in her home during a taped phone call to her incarcerated boyfriend, a Suffolk County prosecutor said at the close of her trial.

LAKEISHA GADSON (D.O.B. 8/17/76) of Roxbury is charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment of a child, and other offenses for allegedly allowing her teenaged son to store a loaded gun in his dresser, which sat so low to the ground that Jefferson was able to retrieve it on the night of June 24, 2007, and provide it to his seven-year-old cousin. That cousin shot him during a game, causing injuries that killed him later that night.

“If the defendant hadn’t allowed her 15-year-old son to keep a 9mm semiautomatic handgun in the top drawer of his dresser,” Assistant District Attorney David Deakin told jurors during his closing argument, “Liquarry Jefferson would still be with us and we would not be here. That’s what this case is about.”

Deakin, the chief of Suffolk DA Daniel F. Conley’s Child Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau, introduced evidence and testimony during four days of trial to show that Gadson was well aware of the firearm before it was used to kill Jefferson and allowed JAYQUAN McCONNICO (D.O.B. 10/29/91) to store it in his room. McConnico pleaded guilty to similar offenses in 2008 as a youthful offender.

Deakin cited a June 2, 2007, conversation between Gadson and her boyfriend, who was behind bars at the Nashua Street Jail. As with all such calls, this one was recorded. It was also played for jurors, who heard Gadson recount a story in which McConnico came home to “get it” upon hearing a threat against a friend and quoted someone as saying McConnico should “make sure he’s strapped” – slang for carrying a gun.

In addition to manslaughter and endangerment charges, Gadson is also accused of misleading a police officer under the state’s witness intimidation laws for telling – and encouraging others to tell – investigators that unknown assailants entered her home and shot the boy to death before fleeing.

“There is no doubt that she told her children to lie to the police about the circumstances of this case,” Deakin said.

And in the aftermath of her son’s fatal shooting, Deakin said, Gadson waited while McConnico took the firearm and ammunition out of the apartment before he called 911. She never asked where the gun came from or how the seven-year-old boy got hold of it, Deakin said, telling jurors that she already knew the answers.

“The evidence tells us, not beyond a reasonable doubt but beyond any doubt, that the defendant knew Jayquan Martin kept a gun in his dresser,” Deakin said.

The “incredibly risky, unacceptably dangerous” decision to allow the gun to remain unsecured in a home with five children led predictably to Jefferson’s death at the hands of another child, Deakin said.

“If she had not let Jayquan McConnico keep that gun in his dresser, Liquarry Jefferson would not have died,” Deakin said.

After closing arguments, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Thomas Connors began instructing jurors on the relevant law. If jurors do not reach unanimous verdicts today, they will return to courtroom 806 on Monday at 9:00

Philip Harrison is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Peter Krupp represents the defendant.