Josef Cruikshank Tribute Onlinetributes.com.au

"HE WAS principled, passionate, his mother's son.

"He would fight tooth and nail for principles and go off before he knew all the facts."

Rose Ferraro remembered her dead son, Josef Cruikshank, with pride and joy yesterday.

On Saturday night she was called and told that Josef had been shot at a sleepover in neighbouring Orangeville.

She did not discuss the facts with police, but she does not believe her son's friend should be charged with his murder.

Only the two boys were there, she said, and it was an accident.

Ms Ferraro said she had spoken to the mother of her son's friend, and was told that the boy was "a mess".

"[The boy, who cannot be named] has been charged with the worst thing on the face of the earth. I don't want any charges at all. I want it expunged. I want this kid to seek all the counselling he can get his hands on," Ms Ferraro said.

"My thing is there was not malice, no anger, no fight - there was nothing. It was boys exploring, gone wrong."

But police were unchanged in their stance yesterday. The boy, 14, had been charged with murder and that charge would go to court.

"Obviously there was sufficient evidence for that charge to be laid," Inspector Stephen Parry, from Camden police station, said.

"The investigation is currently ongoing. We are pursuing a number of lines of inquiry in relation to a number of factors."

A spokesman for the NSW Attorney-General's office said the murder charge was a matter for police, but they could consider the family's views in deciding whether to proceed.

"They'll listen to something, but they're under no legal obligation to not go ahead," he said. "It depends if he had any kind of criminal intent. Obviously all those things would be considered."

At Camden High School, Josef was remembered with black armbands and flags at half mast. An assembly was held yesterday morning, students were told about the shooting, and four counsellors spent the day working through grief.

"We still don't know if it was an accident and that is, I suppose, what makes this doubly hard," the principal, John Jarvis, said.

"What we've told the students is just the bare facts but we've actually given them the accurate facts."

Ms Ferraro cried when told about the armbands. Her son, she said, was cheeky - naughty, even - and friends with everybody. He had recently added vanity to the mix, she said. He was showering three times a day, had asked for weights this Christmas and had had the girls calling since primary school. "My son the metro," she said. "He was colour co-ordinated at four."

Josef's shooting prompted the Premier, Nathan Rees, to look at the state's gun laws.

But yesterday he said he would only make changes if it was proven that stricter measures were required.

Mr Rees said he had sought a report on the teenager's death and a string of drive-by shootings in Sydney at the weekend.

"If there are things that we need to do, then we will do them to reduce availability or tighten up provisions relating to gun ownership and control and safe keeping of firearms."

with AAP