A 14-year-old Michigan boy nearly lost his life after missing his school bus this week.
Brennan Walker went searching for help at a home in the Rochester Hills community on Thursday after he woke up late for school and missed his bus, Fox 2 Detroit reported. Things took a turn for the worst, however, the teen was confronted by a man with a shotgun.
“I got to the house, and I knocked on the lady’s door,” Walker told the station. “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 continued.
Luckily, the man missed and Walker was able to flee to safety. The teen said he ran, hid and then cried. He didn’t have his phone with him at the time and got lost trying to walk the bus route to school.
“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,” he told Fox 2 Detroit. “I’m kind of happy that, like, I didn’t become a statistic.”
Walker’s mother, Lisa Wright, said she was at work when she got word of what happened to her son. Wright’s husband is currently deployed in Syria, and she said she assumed the call was about him until she realized they were calling about her 14-year-old.
According to Oakland County investigators, the harrowing encounter was captured by the couple’s Ring doorbell surveillance. Authorities have not released the video, but Walker’s mother said what she saw definitely confirmed her suspicions.
“One of the things that stands out, that probably angers me the most is that while I was watching the tape, you can hear the wife say, ‘Why did ‘these people” choose my house?’ ” Wright said. “Who are, ‘these people?’ And that set me off. I did not 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].”
Oakland County Sheriff deputies came and arrested the woman’s husband shortly after the incident. He’s currently being held at a local jail and is expected to be arraigned on Friday, according to Fox 2 Detroit.
“It is just absurd that this happened,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. “… 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.”
