The Baltimore teenager whose angry mom yanked him from a crowd of rioters, a moment captured in a viral video clip, said he knows that his mom had his best interests at heart.
Michael Singleton spoke out for the first time Wednesday in interviews with ABC News and CNN's Anderson Cooper. The 16-year-old described the shock and embarrassment of seeing his mother show up at the scene of the chaos then smack and scream at him in front of many of his friends.
"I'm like, 'Oh my, why is my mother coming down here right now?'" Singleton told ABC News.
But despite his initial reaction, Singleton says he's learned a lesson from the incident.
"I understand how much my mother really cares about me so I'm just going to try and do better," Singleton told ABC News.
And his mother, Toya Graham, said she's no longer angry with him. On Tuesday, Graham, a single mother of six, told CBS News that she didn't want to see her only son be "a Freddie Gray."
"I'm not angry with him anymore. As long as I have breath in my body you will not be on the streets selling drugs," Graham said. "You just not going to live like that. Not with me."
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Singleton was told to go straight home from school on Monday, but he didn't listen and took off with his friends instead. When Graham spotted him wearing a black ski mask and hoodie with a rock in hand, she was furious.
"She didn't want me to get in trouble by the law," Singleton told Anderson Cooper. "She didn't want me to be another Freddie Gray."
Demonstrations in the wake of 25-year-old Gray's death continued on Tuesday night, but protesters eventually dispersed after a curfew was imposed. The curfew was prompted by the violence--cars were set on fire, stores were looted-- that broke out following Gray's funeral on Monday.