People are surely nuts

A Black Teenager Asked for Directions. A Man Responded With Gunfire

Brennan Walker, 14, of Rochester Hills, Mich., woke up around 7:30 a.m. on Thursday — too late. 

He had slept through his alarm and was going to miss the school bus.

So he decided to walk to Rochester High School, where he is a freshman. 

That takes about an hour and a half, but he thought he would at least make it in time for his third-period class in world studies, his favorite subject.

. . . .

He tried one home, and then another. 

A [white] woman answered the door, he said, and began yelling almost immediately, as if he were trying to break into her house.

“She didn’t really give me a chance to speak a lot, and I was trying to tell her that I go to Rochester High and I was looking for directions,” Brennan said on Friday. 

“A few moments later the guy came downstairs, and he grabbed the shotgun.”

Brennan ran. 

The man followed briefly, walking out of his house and stepping off his porch, according to home security camera footage reviewed by the authorities. 

He fired a single shot with a 12-gauge shotgun, but Brennan was not hit. 

The teenager kept running. 

A few minutes later he encountered deputies — the woman at the home had called the authorities — and told his story.

To their credit and my surprise, the police apparently behaved sensibly.

“It’s disgusting, it’s disturbing and it’s unacceptable on every level,” Sheriff Michael Bouchard of Oakland County said. 

On Friday, the man, Jeffery Zeigler, 53 [and white], was charged with assault with intent to murder and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony, the authorities said.