A 14-year-old Black teen nearly lost his life simply for asking for directions in a Rochester Hills Neighborhood.
Brennan Walker missed his bus on Thursday morning and decided to walk the route to school when he suddenly realized he was lost, WJBK reports. His mother had previously taken away his phone so he had no way to find his way back, so he decided to knock on a door to ask for directions.
“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 said in an interview with the outlet.
Walker said he was shaken and started crying as he ran off in the distance and hid to dodge the shots. Authorities were called to the residence where they arrested Randy Wimbley, a 53-year-old former firefighter.
Walker in turn said that his mother’s forewarnings, although heartbreaking, may have actually saved his life.
“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.
According to WJBK, unreleased security video shows the chilling encounter between Walker and the suspect.
Lisa Wright, Walker’s mother, says that she was enraged after watching the footage.
“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 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 [what it looks like].”
Walker’s 2013 near death encounter is eerily reminiscent of Renisha McBride, a young woman who was shot and killed after stopping in a Dearborn Heights, a nearby Michigan neighborhood.
Walker, was able to walk away with his life, but the incident will no doubt be ingrained in his memory for the rest of his life.
SOURCE: WJBK
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Black Teen Shot At After Asking For Directions In A Michigan Neighborhood was originally published on hellobeautiful.com
