DETROIT – For many Detroit school children, getting to school is dangerous enough. It's dark at many bus stops and they have to walk past abandoned homes without knowing what kind of trouble may lurk inside.
For one 13-year-old middle-school boy, an attempted bus ride to school became terrifying. An armed thief took his cellphone, Adidas jacket and red and black shoes, which now are replaced by less flashy gray ones.
"To be robbed, I am very upset," his mother said. "I think it's a disgrace that, you know, I think people should just know you have to look out for your children and get these people off the streets. They need to be off the streets."
Her son is upset to see his mother's hard-earned money get stolen.
"She was very upset, and I was upset, too," he said. "Because my mom worked so hard to get those shoes for me and my jacket and phone."
The armed thief flashed his silver revolver for a moment. It's a memory the young boy now carries with him.
"'Cause, when I go to sleep I think about the man who put the gun at me. I just remember looking down at the gun in shock," he said. "He was like, 'Give me everything you got.' So then he told me to take off my hoodie, take off my coat. He basically wanted me to strip off everything really but he seen I didn't have nothing else on."
His mother is frustrated that her son can't even get to school without trouble finding him.
"I just think it's terrible that a teen boy can't go to school to better himself, to be a better man in his own community," she said.
The mother said she would like to move out of Detroit, but it does cost money she doesn't have. Now, she feels frightened and angry.