Boy Who Was Shot With a BB Gun While Selling Lemonade Gets Back to Business
9-year-old has a message for shooter: "He can change his life around."
— -- A Wisconsin boy who was shot in the face with a BB gun on Monday while running a lemonade stand went back into business Tuesday.
He offered a special message for the shooter. "He can change his life around," 9-year-old Jayden Grant told local ABC affiliate WBAY-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin. "He can make better choices."
Jayden was shot with a BB gun around 3:45 p.m. on Monday, according to the Fox Valley Metro Police Department. He was transported to an area hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
“This car was driving by and I was on a bike. I turned the corner, this guy had this gun out the window. He shot it and it went right here,” the precocious boy told WBAY, pointing to right below his left eye.
His mother, Leah Grant, said she was grateful it didn't hit his eye, telling WBAY-TV, “It was embedded in there and they had to dig it out, but what if it hit his eye and the bone wasn’t there to stop it? Would it have penetrated his brain? I don’t know, I don’t know, but he probably would have lost an eye, that’s for sure."
But, the entrepreneurial boy was undeterred from his business. He went back to the lemonade stand on Tuesday and welcomed a visit from local police officers at the Fox Valley Metro Police Department, who posted a photo at the lemonade stand on their Facebook page.
“It is very uncommon in this area for random violence like this,” Community Support Officer Mike Lambie told ABC News, "We wanted to encourage him to get back out there and enjoy his summer."
"We encouraged all of our community members to visit him and support," Lambie added, saying that three officers, including himself, went and bought some lemonade from him. He said that the boy seemed to be doing very well.
The Fox Valley Metro Police captioned the photo from the lemonade stand on Facebook, "This was just 24 hours after he was shot in the face with a BB gun at this same stand. This speaks to Jayden's courage and perseverance, to stand up and not let random violence stop him from enjoying his summer."
19-year-old Evgeniy Tetzlaff was arrested and charged with a felony count of injury by negligent use of a weapon, for the BB gun shooting, as well as a theft from earlier the same day, Fox Valley Metro Police said in a statement. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for August 5, and a plea hearing has not been held, according to the Outagamie County Clerk of Circuit Courts office.