Baltimore Mom Toya Graham's Son Speaks: 'Police Was Just On My Mind'

A Baltimore teenager spoke out Wednesday about being involved in a video that went viral Monday night -- a video that showed his mother disciplining him in front of Baltimore crowds and news cameras after she caught him preparing to throw a rock at a police officer. “A couple of years ago, my homeboy got beat by police. So I wanted to go there and protest with him,” Michael Singlton told WMAR-TV on Wednesday. “For real, for real, my mom wasn’t on my mind. Police was just on my mind.”

Singleton's mother, Toya Graham, made headlines after she caught her 16-year-old son, participating in Monday night's rioting. “When the cameras are not there and it’s just me and my son and I’m trying to show him right from wrong, and then you get to a situation like that and you see him doing wrong you just react, because you teach him better than that,” Graham said.

Graham is a single mother of six, and she was with her oldest daughter at a doctor’s appointment when she received a phone call that local schools were closing early. She went to the protests, where she saw rioters throwing bricks at police. That’s when she spotted her oldest son.

"He gave me eye contact. And at that point, you know, not even thinking about cameras or anything like that. That's my only son and at the end of the day I don't want him to be a Freddie Gray," Graham told CBS News on Tuesday. She recognized his sweatpants immediately.

"There's some days that I'll shield him in the house just so he won't go outside, and I know that I can't do that for the rest of my life," Graham added. "I'm a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me, know I don't play that."

The New York Post labeled her mother of the year, and a GoFundMe page was recently set up for her. Donate here.