PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A white retired firefighter has been sentenced to at least four years in prison for shooting at a black teenager who came to his suburban Detroit home asking for directions to school.
Jeffrey Zeigler apologized before he was sentenced Tuesday in Oakland County court. A jury convicted him last month of assault and a gun crime.
Fourteen-year-old Brennan Walker wasn’t hurt. He told police he missed a school bus on April 12 and knocked on Zeigler’s door in Rochester Hills after getting lost. He ran after seeing a man inside the house grab a gun.
The 53-year-old Zeigler says he woke up to his wife’s screams and that she believed someone was trying to break into their home.
He’ll be eligible for parole after four years.
Good!
Maybe all the people like this could join together in a big class-action suit against the people who told them it made sense to throw a couple of hot ones at any random minority member you become aware of.
To be fair: “Shooting black teenager” is a stretch.
Apparently seing a black persons makes a lot of white people panic in the USA ? 14 years old ?
Can’t really ask for more.
Some details:
The judge, Wendy Potts, rightly gave the jury the option of convicting on the lesser charges.
And the prosecutors, too, deserve as much credit as the jury. One of them was Kelly Collins:
And then there was the surveillance footage and the testimony of Detective Shawn Pace of the Sherriff’s office.
As I said, the Deep State came through this time: I can’t really ask for more.
This guy should have told the court the teen failed to signal a lane change when exiting the front porch. Then killing him would have been justified.