Bullet pierces boy's jersey in Dorchester close call

DORCHESTER, Mass. (WHDH) -- A 9-year-old boy in Dorchester survived a close call on Tuesday when a bullet came through his bedroom wall and left a hole in a jersey he was wearing.

The boy was unhurt, but had the shot been just a fraction of an inch in another direction, it could have been a very different story.

Police left the home just after noon on Wednesday with a bullet pulled from the wall of the boy’s second-floor bedroom.

Nine-year-old Preston Stevens described how his favorite Celtics jersey saved his life.

“The bullet like came really fast, it went right here,” Preston said, pointing to the hole in his Rajon Rondo jersey. “Then I backed up.”

Preston said he actually smelled the smoke from the bullet after it flew by.

“I saw smoke, like from the back of me I saw smoke, then I looked back and I saw smoke,” he said. “And then when I looked front I saw smoke again.”

The smoke was coming from his jersey, snagged by a bullet that came from the outside, right through the wall of 77 Ellington Street.

“I can’t lose another person in my family,” Preston’s mother, Sharon Jackson, said. “I just felt like I could have lost him like I lost Jamal.”

Jamal Jackson is Sharon’s late brother, a basketball star who was stabbed to death in 1995. Preston’s middle name is Jamal.

“That’s why I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “I could have been going through the same tragedy of that empty -- of losing him like I lost my brother. It just brought back flashbacks.”

Preston’s bedroom window is filled with basketball trophies; now his bed is filled with the dust and debris the bullet left behind.

Preston says he was on the floor in the hallway praying during the nightmarish scare.

“It was like God pushed me back,” he said.

“I’m in shock right now; I really don’t know how to feel right now,” Sharon said. “I’m scared. I’m so drained.”

The Stevens family said they would stay in the home most of the day on Wednesday but that they would not be sleeping there Wednesday night.

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