One minute Brandon Roller was playing outside with friends, and the next he was on the floor of his east Birmingham apartment with a gunshot wound to the back.

Neither he nor his mother, Courtney Chestner, ever saw it coming.

Though doctors say Brandon, a Smith Middle School seventh grader who plays the baritone horn in the school band, will never walk again, the family is praying their faith will yield a different outcome.

Brandon hasn’t shed one tear since the Friday shooting and is remaining positive.

“Don’t be sad, because I’m alive,’’ Brandon said Tuesday in a phone interview from his bed at Children’s of Alabama. “I made it. I pulled through it. I’m OK.”

The shooting happened about 3:15 p.m. Friday at a small apartment complex in the 1800 block of Carson Road.

Chestner said Brandon asked her if he could go outside to play.

“I told him he could,’’ she said. “I’m always telling him no, but for some reason this time I told him he could.”

Chestner was upstairs in her bathroom and her other three sons, all younger than Brandon, were in their room watching television. It was then that Chester heard a commotion.

“I thought maybe one of the younger boys had stuck something in the socket because it was a popping noise, like fireworks,’’ she said.

She went downstairs and saw a boy run into her home. He came in the back door and was running out the front door.

“I turned towards the back door, and that’s when I saw my son laying on the floor,’’ Chestner said. “He said he was shot.”

“I dragged him from the back door to the kitchen because I didn’t know if they were still shooting,’’ she said. “I called 911 and put some towels on his back.”

When Brandon was able to talk to her, he told her some teens approached him and the others and asked if they knew somebody. Brandon told them they didn’t, and they said something to the effect of “that’s good because if y’all did, y’all were going to die today.”

Another boy asked the teens, “Ya’ll straight?” and that’s when gunfire erupted.

Brandon ran and made it just inside his apartment when he was struck. The bullets went through the back door and into his back, his mother said.

Chestner said the bullet hit Brandon’s spinal cavity, went through one of the bones, traveled through his right lung and fractured his rib.

He was just moved from the Intensive Care Unit to the hospital’s surgery floor because he still has in his chest tube.

“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,’’ she said. “He is so strong, so strong.”

The family had just recently moved into the Carson Road apartment. They had lost their lease on their previous home and spent all of last year moving from place to place while looking for permanent housing.

“We stayed in hotels, we even stayed in a place with no water, so we had to go to the gas station to use the bathroom,’’ Chestner said. “2023 was hell.”

“For Christmas we ended up getting a place,’’ she said. “We just got their beds. We were just getting life together when this happened.”

“My other son said, ‘We just can’t catch a break, they just destroyed our family,’’’ Chestner said.

Up until the shooting, Chestner was a team leader at Kamtek, working the 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift overseeing the manufacturing of parts for Hyundai, Nissan, and Volkswagen.

She’s now not sure when, or if, she’ll be able to return. The future is uncertain except they know Brandon will have a long, extensive recovery.

A GoFundMe has been launched to help the family.

“Brandon is the kind of kid everyone loves to be around, he has a light about himself that gravitated towards anybody who came across his path,’’ his aunt, Martesha Adams, wrote in the GoFundMe.

“Brandon also enjoys rapping, writing his own music, recording, telling jokes, and playing with his brothers, and friends,’’ Adams wrote.

Donations to the GoFundMe can be made here.

No arrests have been made, and detectives are following up on leads.

“I’m hoping that they find the kids – these are teenagers who did this – and I’m hoping they can get them off the streets, they can sit down for a while, learn a lesson, and maybe turn their life around,’’ Chestner said.

“I’m hoping something can happen,’’ she said, “where we don’t have to be looking over our shoulders.”

As Brandon continues his recovery, he said he wants people to know this:

“Watch your surroundings because you never know what could happen,’’ he said. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen.”

Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.