DETROIT – Detroit police said a possible case of a mistaken identity led to a 17-year-old being badly injured from a shooting on the city's east side.
The shooting happened on Payton Street near the intersection of Moross and Kelly roads.
The mother of the victim said she's furious because she watched someone deliberately aim an AK-47 at her son, her mother and her young niece and nephew outside their house. She said it was clearly a case of mistaken identity.
"I watched them shooting my son," Denisha Pertee said. "Like 40 shots. You heard all 40."
She said they'd noticed a strange Grand Prix with tinted windows parked across the street for a few days, but as her son, Xavier Dixon, jumped into the car with his grandmother and 2- and 4-year-old cousins, someone opened fire.
"When my mom got to the edge of the driveway, they just started shooting the car up," Pertee said. "My mom tried to hit the gas; instead, she hit the house. My son got out and ran to me."
At that moment, she said she realized her son had been seriously injured. She said he had been shot in the arm.
Dixon was rushed to the hospital. The bullets grazed his grandmother, but the children weren't hurt. Detroit police don't believe it was a random shooting, but Pertee insisted her son wasn't the intended target.
"You didn't get your target," Pertee said. "You're just shooting and you don't even know who you were shooting for."
His mother believes the gunmen mistook her son for a distant family member who doesn't live at the house.
Dixon is expected to survive, officials said.
Investigators are working to find the people who were inside the Grand Prix.