Brennan Walker, a teen who was almost shot after asking a white neighbor for directions, will graduate from high school early.
The Michigan teen graduated from high school last month, reported Fox 2 Detroit. The milestone occurred three years after Walker was almost killed by Jeffrey Zeigler, his former neighbor.
In April 2018, Walker woke up late one morning and missed the school bus. His mother had his phone so he tried to walk to school but ended up getting lost. Walker approached a home and knocked on the door to ask for directions.
Zeigler’s wife answered and instead of helping, she accused him of trying to break in and screamed for her husband. Zeigler arrived and armed himself with a shotgun.
“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,” Walker recalled to Fox 2 shortly after the incident.
The bullet narrowly missed Walker because Zeigler forgot to take the safety off the weapon. Walker was 14 years old at the time.
Zeigler was convicted of assault with intent to do great bodily harm and using a firearm in the commission of a felony, per The Oakland Press. He was sentenced to 4 to 10 years in prison.
The incident left Walker traumatized and his grades suffered. After he sought therapy, he was able to thrive.
“Eventually I pulled myself together and got through it and I became student council president at the school I was at, and I was also vice president for a while,” he said.
Walker hasn’t forgotten about his encounter with Zeigler.
“It doesn’t mentally impact me as much as it used to, but I think about the events every day,” he admitted.
His mom, Lisa, is thrilled with her son’s success.
“Student council president, vice president, being accepted to 11 different colleges,” she said. “Having a choice of colleges, and I was a young mom. When I was 17 and carrying him, I had no clue who he would be today.”
Walker plans to attend Florida Memorial University, a historically Black institution in Miami, Florida. He is thinking about studying biology.
“I kind of think I picked it just because I kind of wanted to be around more people of color and I kind of wanted to also leave Michigan because I feel like I know a lot of people here – and I want to be surrounded by new people,” he explained to Fox 2 Detroit.
