CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- Chesterfield Police arrested a 17-year-old male in connection to a BB gun shooting outside DICK'S Sporting Goods at the Hancock Village Shopping Center in Midlothian.
Matthew Gravitt was shot in the eye and legs while leaving the store with a group of friends on Friday, April 15.
"I got a phone call from one of his friends and I picked up and my son was screaming in the background, 'someone shot me in the eye,'" Matthew's mother Lindsay Gravitt told CBS 6 earlier this week.
His friends drove him to the nearby Swift Creek ER for immediate treatment. Doctors there put him in an ambulance and sent him to the hospital for surgery on his eye, his mom said.
The arrest came more than a week after Gravitt said she provided a name of a potential suspect to police and a day after the CBS 6 Problem Solvers published a report on the BB gun shooting.
Matthew and his friends said they were leaving the store when a car pulled up and someone fired a BB gun at them.
After her son's injury, Gravitt was told about a drive-by challenge trend where people record videos of themselves shooting unsuspecting victims with BBs or Airsoft pellets or paintballs and post those videos on TikTok and other social media.
'If these kids are doing these Tik Tok challenges, they need to know someone might shoot back," she said. "I really would like these kids stopped before someone else gets hurt."
Police charged the 17-year-old BB gun shooting suspect with aggravated malicious wounding. The teenager was being held at the Chesterfield Juvenile Detention Home.
Anyone with information was asked to call 804-748-1251 or Crime Solvers at 804-748-0660.
This is a developing story, so anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
