Nineteen-year-old Braylen Kizzee is a college freshman who plays football at University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Texas. The college student also dreams to follow in his father’s footsteps in law enforcement, but a Dec. 3 incident with police has left a sour taste in his mouth.
While driving back to school on that Tuesday morning, Kizzee was entering the Fort Bend toll road when he said an unmarked truck cut him off and another rammed into his driver side door, according to ABC 13. “I really thought someone was trying to jack me for my car,” Kizzee said.
Instead, one of the drivers in the unmarked vehicle rolled down his window, aimed his gun at Kizzee, and started yelling at the 19-year-old to “‘show me your hands before I blow your head off.’” The teen told ABC 13, “he made me crawl to the passenger side and get out on my hands and knees and go to the cop car.”
The freshman followed directions, but it wasn’t until one of the four officers pulled off Kizzee’s hat that they realized they had the wrong guy. “If he made one wrong move, I probably would be burying my son,” his father, Byron, said. “I’m not okay with that. I want everybody held accountable.”
The officers were actually after a man who they say robbed multiple ATMs in Kentucky. The fugitive is descried as 6-foot-1 with neck tattoos, according to Click 2 Houston News. “I don’t know how they could’ve gotten us mixed up,” Kizzee said. He has no tattoos, is about four inches shorter than the suspect, and most importantly, the college linebacker has no criminal record.
His father, who is a police officer himself, said he also doesn’t know how such a damaging mistake could’ve happened. “If you was watching him with binoculars like you say, then it’s obvious you seen it’s not your suspect,” he said. Kizzee’s mother, on the other hand, said there’s only one similarity between the suspect and the teen. “The only thing that... the person that they were looking for and my son have in common, is that they were Black,” she said.
In addition to the traumatic events, Kizzee also said his knees were mildly injured from crawling, and there are several dents in his car from the initial impact. The officers involved visited the Kizzee house to apologize and produce a claim for damages to Kizzee’s car, according to ABC 13.
“Nothing they did was procedure,” Bryon, continued to ABC 13. “You never identified yourself. You’re in unmarked cars. The unit behind him, that was marked, never turned on the lights. It’s terrifying.”
Kizzee told Click 2 Houston that he can’t sleep at night and even fears the three hour commute back to his college. He’s studying criminal justice in school in hopes of being better than the officers who pulled him over. “That just teaches me to always follow procedure because I wouldn’t want to wish that on any other human being,” he said to ABC 13.