A white retired firefighter in Michigan was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison on Tuesday after he was found guilty of firing a gun at a black teenager asking for directions to get to school.
Jeffrey Zeigler was sentenced to two to 10 years for one count of assault with intent to do great bodily harm in addition to two years for one count of possession of a firearm in commission of a felony, NBC News reported.
The charges stem from an incident that took place in April. In surveillance footage of the incident, 14-year-old Brennan Walker is seen stopping at Zeigler’s home in Rochester Hills, on the outskirts of Detroit, to ask for directions after he missed his bus.
Walker told a local NBC News affiliate in April that after he knocked on Ziegler’s door, a “lady came downstairs yelling at me.”
“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,” he said.{mosads}
Zeigler’s wife called the police and said a black male was attempting to “break into” her house, and that her husband “chased after him into the yard,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement to the local NBC affiliate.
As seen on the surveillance video, Zeigler, a retired Detroit firefighter, went outside with a shotgun and fired at the boy as he attempted to flee.
Though Walker was uninjured in the attack, his mother, Lisa Wright, said he has been receiving therapy since the incident.
“This will affect my son forever,” Wright told NBC News.
During his arraignment earlier this year, Ziegler said he was innocent and that there was “a lot more to this story than what is being told.”
He said he grabbed his shotgun because he believed he was being robbed and that the weapon went off accidentally when he tripped.
Local police have told reporters that security footage of the incident shows Zeigler clearly aimed at the teenager, however.