#Roommates, I’m sure we’ve all missed the school bus at some point in our lives, but I’m sure it was nothing like what this 14-year-old boy went through. Brennan Walker was trying to walk the bus route to Rochester High School after he woke up late and missed his bus. His mom had taken his phone, so he didn’t have anyone to call or directions. He ended up knocking on a strangers door and it almost cost him his life.
“ I got to the house, and I knocked on the lady’s door. Then she started yelling at me and she was like, ‘Why are you trying to break into my house?’ I was trying to explain to her that I was trying to get directions to Rochester High. And she kept yelling at me. Then the guy came downstairs, and he grabbed the gun, I saw it and started to run. And that’s when I heard the gunshot,” he says.
The man ended up missing and the teen says he was so shaken up that he cried.
“My mom says that, black boys get shot because sometimes they don’t look their age, and I don’t look my age. I’m 14; but I don’t look 14. I’m kind of happy that, like, I didn’t become a statistic,” he says in retrospect.
Oakland County Sheriff Deputies arrived soon after to the home and took the woman’s husband into custody.
FOX 2: “Your son almost became a hashtag.”
“Exactly, and that’s exactly how I feel. Like, wow. Because you were trying to get to school,” says his mother, Lisa Wright. “I found out later the only reason [the man] missed is because he forgot to take the safety off.”
Lisa was at work when this all went down but says she dropped everything when she got the call.
Investigators showed her the family’s outside camera footage and that ultimately led to the mans arrest.
“One of the things that stands out, that probably angers me the most is, while I was watching the tape, you can hear the wife say, ‘Why did “these people” choose my house?'” she says, before taking a long pause. “Who are, “these people?” And that set me off. I didn’t want to believe it was what it appeared to look like. When I heard her say that, it was like, but it is [what it looks like].”
“We should not have to live in a society where we have to fend for ourselves. If I have a question, I should be able to turn to my village and knock on a door and ask a question. I shouldn’t be fearful of a child, let alone a skin tone,” she adds. “This is a decent neighborhood. If anything — why would I knock on your door to rob you?”
“It is just absurd that this happened,” says Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard. “I feel terrible for the young man; I feel terrible for the mom and the anxiety that they had to go through. We are going to ask for every charge permissible for this guy, who stepped up and fired a shotgun because someone knocked on his door.”
The man, Jefferey Zeigler, was hit with an Assault with Intent to Murder and Felony Firearms charges. He received a bond of $50,000, with conditions, and is due in court again April 24.
