A 22-year-old college baseball player was shot and killed by a police officer after he mistakenly knocked on a stranger's back door following a night out with friends, and his mother says the entire encounter lasted barely three minutes.
Glenwood "Bubba" Pysher IV had been celebrating a friend's 21st birthday at a bar in the hours before he walked to a home on Snyder Road in Upper Pottsgrove Township, Pennsylvania, just after midnight on Sunday, Aug. 23. He thought it was his friend's house. It was not. The homeowners called 911 to report a possible break-in, and an Upper Pottsgrove Township police officer responded. Within minutes, Pysher was dead.
His mother, Erin Pysher, told Fox News Digital that her son had no idea he was at the wrong address. He had been drinking, took a wrong turn, and ended up at a stranger's back door asking to be let in, believing his friends were inside.
The Montgomery County District Attorney's office, led by DA Kevin R. Steele, confirmed that police arrived on scene "to find a male in the rear of the residence." An "encounter" followed. The DA's office has not said what happened during that encounter, what commands the officer gave, or why the officer opened fire. The investigation, the office said, is active.
"The fatal shooting is an active investigation. When the investigation is complete, we will provide media with the findings."
That was the full statement from the DA's office. No details about the officer's actions. No explanation of what justified deadly force against a man at someone's back door.
Erin Pysher said her son was shot twice. The New York Post reported that Pysher was unarmed, carrying only a cell phone and a backpack at the time of the shooting. The Post also reported that surveillance footage from the backyard captured the incident and is part of the ongoing investigation.
The timeline his mother described is striking. She told reporters that at 12:32 a.m., her son was on the phone with his friends. By 12:35, she believes he had already been shot.
"12:32, he was on the phone with his friends. By 12:35, I believe he's already shot. So, within a few minutes, the cop pulled up and shot him. He was unarmed."
Three minutes. That is the window Erin Pysher described between her son talking to friends on his phone and an officer firing two rounds into him.
Erin Pysher told Fox News Digital she had dropped her son off with friends at a bar earlier that evening. The group was celebrating a friend's 21st birthday. They went bar-hopping, and at some point the group split up. Pysher decided to walk to a friend's house.
"He took a wrong turn and ended up at the wrong house. After a few drinks, he didn't realize it, he was at their back door knocking, thinking it was his friend's house, saying, 'Hey, let me in.'"
The homeowners, not recognizing Pysher, called police and reported what they believed was an attempted burglary. An officer from the Upper Pottsgrove Township Police Department responded to the call. What happened next between the officer and Pysher remains officially unexplained.
The officer has been placed on administrative leave. The officer's name has not been released. The DA's office has not said how many officers responded to the scene, whether Pysher was given verbal commands before the shooting, or whether he made any threatening gestures. None of those basic questions have been publicly answered.
Bubba Pysher was not a drifter or a career criminal. He was a college senior preparing to leave that Sunday afternoon to start the fall semester at St. Elizabeth College in New Jersey. Baseball had been his life. His obituary, published by Warker Troutman Funeral Home, noted that he had played college baseball at Francis Marion University, Northampton Community College, and Holy Family University before landing at St. Elizabeth for his final year.
He wanted to become a history teacher and a baseball coach.
His mother described him as a young man who loved fishing, loved his friends, and loved teasing his three younger sisters. She called him a jokester, the kind of son who had inside jokes with his mom.
"He was a great kid; I couldn't ask for a better son. A little jokester, we had our inside jokes, and he loved teasing his three younger sisters. There's a huge hole in our life without him."
She also said something that cuts to the center of this case:
"He's never been in trouble, he was a good kid. I don't know what prompted the cop to think that the shooting was necessary."
The public knows that a 22-year-old unarmed man knocked on a stranger's back door after drinking. The public knows police responded to a 911 call. The public knows that within minutes, the young man was dead from two gunshot wounds fired by an officer.
What the public does not know is almost everything else. The DA's office has not disclosed:
Surveillance footage exists. The DA's office has acknowledged the investigation is active. But the family and the public are left with a three-minute gap between a phone call to friends and a fatal shooting, and no official account of what filled it.
Erin Pysher's account is a mother's account. She was not at the scene. But the facts she has described, her son's lack of a criminal record, his unarmed status, the cell phone and backpack he carried, the brevity of the encounter, raise serious questions about whether the officer's use of deadly force was proportionate to the threat, if any threat existed at all.
Accountability runs in every direction. If an officer used lethal force against an unarmed 22-year-old who was knocking on a door and asking to be let in, the public deserves a full and transparent accounting, not a boilerplate statement and silence. The people who demand law and order also demand that the officers who enforce it answer for how they use the most extreme power the state gives them.
Bubba Pysher should be starting his senior year right now. Instead, his family is planning a funeral, and waiting for answers that no one in authority seems ready to give.
