Photo: GoFundMe
A 12-year-old boy in Alabama was left paralyzed after he was shot in the back while hanging out with his friends.
Brandon Roller, 12, was playing outside with his friends behind his apartment in Birmingham on Friday (March 22) when the shooting unfolded, according to his aunt, Martesha Adams. The Birmingham Police Department said Roller and his friends were “approached by a group of unknown suspects who began firing shots."
The boy "was struck by gunfire while running away,” according to police. Roller was running inside when he was hit in the back with a bullet that went through the door, Sgt. LaQuitta Wade told PEOPLE.
Prior to the shooting, the friend group was approached by a different group of teenagers who asked if the younger kids knew an unidentified person.
Roller told the teens that his friends didn't know the individual. One of the teenagers said if the group of children had known the person, they would've been killed, Wade said.
One of the young boys asked the teens if they were "straight" before gunfire rang out.
Officers responded to the scene and found Roller lying on the floor of his apartment. Roller was taken to a hospital, where he underwent extensive treatment. The shooting left the 12-year-old paralyzed from the waist down. The other children weren't injured.
Roller now has to undergo an “extensive amount of therapy to relearn his normal daily activities and new way of life,” Adams wrote on a GoFundMe page.
Roller's mother, Courtney Chestner, said she has to quit her job to take care of her paralyzed son.
“They say there is a zero percent chance of him ever walking again but our faith is so strong that we know that it’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication,’’ Chestner said. “He is so strong, so strong.”
No arrests have been made in the shooting as of Wednesday (March 27).
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