CHARLOTTE — A mother says her 14-year-old son was robbed at gunpoint while waiting for the bus in east Charlotte.
The mother told Channel 9′s Anthony Kustura she was getting ready for work and watching her two other kids when the robbery happened early Monday morning. Now, she’s urging other parents to be vigilant.
Thureya Maye’s son attends the Charlotte Engineering Early College on the University of North Carolina at Charlotte campus. The school is for kids who excel in math and science. To get there each day, he takes a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools bus.
She said usually, there’s a group of neighborhood kids who wait with him. But on Monday, most of CMS was out for a teacher workday, so Maye’s son waited alone. What happened next, she never imagined.
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“I should’ve listened to my instincts and gone with him,” Maye said.
“Two guys walked up to him and they had guns,” Maye said.
Maye said this all happened around 5:30 a.m. Monday before the sun came up. She said three cars came down the road and parked. She said that was when two men got out and held her son at gunpoint, demanding his phone. But she said they took so much more.
“They didn’t just take a phone, they took his security and his safety,” she said.
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She says her son was traumatized. He didn’t get a good look at the suspects, but police are working to get surveillance video from neighbors.
“They’re trying to collect evidence and connect the dots to see if they can figure out who did it,” Maye said.
Until then, she wants all parents to be on high alert, and never take their kids’ safety for granted.
“Go with them, go with them to the bus stop,” Maye said. “Especially in the early morning hours, safety in numbers.”
Maye says the CMS bus has started picking her son up from directly in front of their house.
Channel 9 asked CMS for comment on this story but so far, we have not heard back.
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