Black teen, 14 gets shot at by a white man for knocking on his door to ask for directions to school after missing his bus

A 14-year-old black boy nearly became a victim of the violence against an unarmed black person in the US.

On Thursday, Brennan Walker, a high school student in Michigan, was shot at by a white man when he knocked on the man’s house to ask for directions.

According to Miami Herald, Walker, a 14-year-old student at Rochester High School in Rochester Hills, Michigan, had missed his bus and decided to walk to school. When the teen got lost, he decided to ask for directions. 

When Walker knocked on the door of one home, a white woman who answered said she feared he was trying to break into her house.

"I knocked on the door, stepped back, knocked, stepped back, and then a lady came downstairs yelling at me," Walker told Click On Detroit. "She asked me, 'Why are you trying to break into my house?' and I told her I was just looking for directions to Rochester High."

Walker then saw a man come down the stairs with a gun. The man aimed at Walker and shot at him as he ran away but was not hit.

'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," Walker added.

The man identified as Jeffrey Zeigler, 53,  a retired firefighter who is white was taken into custody by Oakland County Police. He has since been charged with assault with intent to murder and a felony firearm charge, local news outlets reported, and his bond was set at $50,000. 

He faces as much as life in prison, according to Rochester Patch.

Reacting to the incident, Brennan’s mother,Lisa Wright, said she had heard that the man missed only because he forgot to take the gun’s safety off.

After seeing the surveillance video of the incident police showed her, she said: “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?’ ” Wright said. “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.”

In a statement by Bryan Barnett, the mayor of  Rochester Hills, he condemned the shooting saying he was “personally sickened by the initial reports and they suggest behavior completely unacceptable and inconsistent with the character and values of our community.”