AndrewBlakeGoochland, VA – A mother shot a 25-year-old New Zealand man on Friday who had flown halfway around the world to see her 14-year-old daughter.
The man was carrying a knife, duct tape, and pepper spray when he arrived at the family’s home, WXIN-TV reported.
Police said Troy Skinner met the teenaged girl online using a popular video gaming service called Discord, and the pair exchanged messages for four months before the girl attempted to end their virtual relationship.
Her parents had no knowledge of the communication between their daughter and the much-older man, police said.
“He was not invited here, he was not expected here, he had been told in the past that the daughter no longer wished to communicate with him,” Goochland County Sheriff Jim Agnew said, according to WXIN.
Skinner took three flights – from New Zealand to Australia, from Australia to Los Angeles, and from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. – before hopping on a Greyhound bus to get from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, Virginia, where he spent the night in a hotel, according to police.
“This was not random, not spontaneous, this was something very planned,” Sheriff Agnew said.
The 14-year-old girl was home with her mother and sister when Skinner showed up unannounced at about 4:30 pm on June 22, and began banging on the door with a brick.
He yelled that he had hitchhiked 30 miles to get to their house and needed help, according to WXIN.
The mother called her husband and he told her to go grab a gun, which she did. Then Skinner threw a landscaping stone through the glass door into the house.
Fearing for the lives of her daughters, the mother fired her weapon twice, and hit Skinner once in the neck, WXIN reported.
Skinner was transported to the hospital and is expected to survive.
“He is not the victim. That lady and her family members are the victims here,” the sheriff reminded reporters at a press conference after the incident.
Police were continuing to investigate and Skinner had not yet been charged with a crime, according to WXIN.