The father of a teen Michigan football player who was shot multiple times in Birmingham believes his son was targeted to be robbed and killed.

Ethan Carter, 18, was shot seven times – including wounds to his skull, hand, arm and chest, Saturday night on the city’s east side – while he was trying to buy a gun in a deal brokered on social media.

“It wasn’t a Facebook Marketplace ad or anything like that where he found out about this gun, it was a flat-out setup,” Brian Carter said. “They weren’t just going to rob him. They were going to leave him for dead.”

Ethan was miraculously released from UAB Hospital Tuesday and returned home to Michigan to continue his recovery.

“I don’t want there to be a picture of my son painted that’s not there,” Brian said.

“Anybody that knows him knows he is one of the most giving, loving, tenderhearted people you will ever meet.”

“He’s a pillar of the community. Everybody loves him,” his father said. “He’s a natural born leader.”

The shooting happened just before 6 p.m. Saturday.

Officers responded to a call of a person shot near Winchester Drive and Ridgewood Circle in the Roebuck area. They arrived to find Carter wounded on the ground.

He was taken by Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service to UAB Hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Sgt. LaQuitta Wade said the preliminary investigation suggests that the victim had arranged through a social media platform to buy a Glock firearm.

There was nothing to suggest the sale was illegal, police said.

Ethan had recently graduated from Hudsonville High School in Michigan and has committed to play football at Davenport University.

The 18-year-old has been training at Step by Step Sports Training in Birmingham since at least 2021, staying with a host family that has become close friends with the Carter family.

He previously attended Parker High School for about six months and played football there. He trains in Birmingham almost monthly.

“He’s been part of the community down there for a long time,” Brian said. “We don’t have that kind of training in Michigan.”

Brian said he usually joins Ethan in Birmingham but did not this time.

He spoke with his son Saturday, who was preparing to leave Birmingham to meet his father and sister in Louisville. Ethan’s sister attends the University of Alabama.

Saturday night, Brian received a call from UAB Hospital. A nurse told him that his son had been in a bad accident, and Brian assumed she meant car accident since Ethan was getting on the road to Louisville.

“I asked if he was OK, and she said, ‘Well he has (seven) gunshot wounds him,” Brian said. “I just about panicked.”

Brian would go on to learn that someone reached out to Ethan on Snapchat and offered to sell him a gun.

“We’re huge gun collectors, and we have a bunch of them,” Brian said.

“Why did he want to buy another one? He told me, ‘Dad, it was a good deal so I wanted to get us another pistol.’”

Ethan did not know the seller.

“He ended up going to meet these guys, who were obviously bad guys,” Brian said. “He’s so trusting. He doesn’t get there’s bad in the world.”

Ethan drove to the meeting spot, where he met a woman who lived in the neighborhood.

“She’s like, ‘What are you doing in this neighborhood?’ and he told her they had a gun for sale,” Brian said. “She told him, ‘You need to trust who you’re buying guns from. This is not Michigan.’’’

Ethan told his father that the suspect walked right up to his car, put his hood on and looked at him sideways.

“Ethan said, ‘I knew something was wrong and they just started shooting at me,’” Brian said.

Ethan was struck twice in the head, as well as five other places. He got out of his car and ran, collapsing in the grass.

The woman he had met earlier, as well as others, rushed to help him.

“Those people, thankfully, were like guardian angels,” Brian said.

The suspect or suspects fled in Ethan’s vehicle, which was found by police after it had been torched.

“This is what they wanted to do,” Brian said. “They were going to kill him and take whatever they could.”

No arrests have been made.

Brian said Ethan remembers quite a bit about the shooting.

“It’s really surprising because he had pretty big blain bleed out of the gate,” he said. “It’s all miraculous.”

“The neurosurgeon said there was no way the bullets shouldn’t have penetrated Ethan’s skull,” Brian said. “He should have been dead and everybody at the hospital said that.”

“They’re all like never ever before have we seen this that at five feet away that someone shoots 24 times, and hit him seven, but nothing fatal,” Brian said.

Ethan has multiple staples in his head and has to go see an orthopedic specialist in Michigan for his hand injury.

Brain believes Ethan was specifically targeted.

“I believe the attack on him was because he has affiliations with other guys,” Brian said.

There were posts made on Snapchat following the shooting, including one that read, “left (Ethan carter’s) blood on my hand,” followed by multiple emoji’s including a laughing face.

“We’re not allowing him to see social media because we’ve some of that as well,” Brian said. “We’re watching social media stuff, and it just makes you sick.”

“I can tell you he’s never going back down there again,” Brian said. “Unfortunately, now as soon as these find out he’s in town, they’re going to kill him. Because they thought he was dead.”

Should Ethan have gone to buy that gun? No, his father said.

“I’m not mad at him. It’s a terrible lesson to learn,” Brian said. “Thank God he’s alive.”

Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham robbery detectives at 205-254-1753 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.