Man Who Fired Shotgun at Teen Asking for Directions Gets up to 10 Years in Prison

A former firefighter who was captured on video firing a shotgun in the direction of a black teen was sentenced to 4 to 10 years in prison.

Jeffrey Zeigler appeared in an Oakland County, Michigan, courtroom where a judge sentenced him, NBC News reported. He was convicted in October.

Zeigler, 53, was seen in a surveillance video on April 12, shooting at Brennan Walker, 14, as he ran down the street. Walker had told police that he missed a school bus and went to Zeigler’s house to ask for directions.

“I knocked on the door, stepped back, knocked, stepped back, and then a lady came downstairs yelling at me,” the teen told WDIV in April. She picked up the phone to apparently call the police, he said, saying he was trying to break into her house.

Ziegler then grabbed a shotgun and chased the boy, firing off a shot.

“I was running away ... I was trying to run away faster and I heard a gunshot,” Walker was quoted as saying.

The boy wasn’t harmed in the incident.

“This will affect my son forever,” his mother, Lisa Wright, told NBC, saying the child is in therapy.

Ziegler apologized to Walker’s mother. “I have full remorse and regret and I wish I could change something, but we can’t go back in time,” he said.

“I'd like to apologize to the family for my actions on that morning, April 12,” Ziegler said, WWJ Radio reported. “After spending 35 days in jail, you know, you do a lot of soul searching. So I do apologize for my actions. I have full remorse and regret and I wish I could change something. But we can’t go back in time.”

Wright, however, told ClickOnDetroit she doesn’t “feel like” Ziegler is “remorseful.”

“I don’t feel like he’s shown remorse. I feel like it’s only because of the media that he feels as though he has to say he’s sorry. His wife hasn’t shown any remorse. I feel like myself and my son are the only ones that are really sorry in this whole thing, and we haven’t done anything,” she said.

She added: “I try to keep race out of it, but we all know that’s pretty much what it was. It’s not fair for people to dislike us about something that we can’t control. If there was a button I could press for me to pick what color I could be just so I wouldn’t have to deal with this type of stuff, I would have to be your color so I could survive. That’s not fair.”