A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted the mother of eight-year-old Liquarry Jefferson of misleading an officer, but acquitted her of four other charges, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

Jurors found LAKEISHA GADSON (D.O.B. 8/17/76) of Roxbury guilty of misleading police officers regarding the circumstances surrounding her son’s shooting death at the hands of a seven-year-old cousin. The loaded firearm, belonging to Gadson’s teenaged son, had been stored in his dresser drawer, which sat so low to the ground that Jefferson was able to retrieve it on the night of June 24, 2007 and hand it to his cousin. That cousin shot him during a game, causing injuries that killed him later that night.

Jurors accepted that Gadson misled police officers when she told investigators that three unknown assailants in hooded sweatshirts entered her home and shot the boy to death before fleeing.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Connors scheduled sentencing on the conviction for September 2 at 2 p.m. The misleading a police officer charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in State Prison.

Jurors acquitted Gadson of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment of a child, improper storage of a firearm and unlawful possession of a firearm.

“We put our best case forward, resolute in our belief that Liquarry Jefferson would be alive if this adult had acted as we expect any responsible parent should,” Conley said. “Each and every charge was grounded in the facts, the law, and the evidence that the defendant knew that gun was in her home. We recognized going into this trial that the jury would have a difficult decision to make, and we will never know the basis for the jury’s split verdict, but bringing this case to trial was the right thing to do in order to secure some measure of accountability for Liquarry Jefferson’s death.”

Assistant District Attorney David Deakin sought to prove during four days of testimony that Gadson knew that there was a loaded firearm in the home at least three weeks 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.

During the trial and in the closing argument, Deakin played a taped phone conversation between Gadson and her incarcerated boyfriend that suggested that she was aware of the firearm.

Sentencing will be in courtroom 806. Philip Harrison is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Peter Krupp represented the defendant.