Former NFL Player Tells All - Growing Up Around Crime & The Reality of Inner-City Violence #jesus

I wanted to be just like him because he worked his behind off, he had his family, he took care of his family, he came home. Now, he had a second job and he was selling cocaine and that's okay at that time. And this might sound crazy to you, I've never blamed my father. I never was the type of man, a child, I never looked for a father. I had my mother, she was everything in the world to me. Now, is it a way that I was missing my dad and I didn't know it? Probably was, but at this particular time, at 9, 10, to 15, I wasn't missing no father because my mom was giving me enough love that I didn't have to miss something that I didn't know anything about. How can you miss something that you don't know anything about? I didn't know anything about it. I met my dad when I was 15 years old, and by that time, I had already formed who I am going to be. one time I came home and told my mom, when I seen a dead body on the path on my way to school you know she told me instead of saying call the police she said find another way around because you know why that's not none of our business stay out of that I don't want the police coming to my house asking me nothing so what we do we ignore the damn dead body and just found another way to get to school. Age of 12 I seen guys get stabbed to death just over a pinball machine game, you know? But that's weird. It becomes normal. You normalize stuff that shouldn't be normal, you know? Getting stabbed, watching somebody get stabbed, and you just walk away like nothing happened. That never happened. Or you just tuck it away in the back of your psyche, and our children are being exposed to things that they shouldn't be exposed to. It was so bad in East St. Louis during this time, and this is at the height when we young. We, You know 17 18 19 years old they were talking about calling the National Guard into the project because murders and people were dying On a daily basis, you know and you in the middle of it we on one end of the project But we don't get along with the guys on the other end and we we talking about less than a city block away Guys that come out. They got every kind of weapon you can imagine and they just start shooting down there on the other end You know random, you know simply because we don't like them guys. They don't like us This was probably when I was about 13 or something. So I already had them guns on me and everything. Some older guys, some Jamaican stuff, we robbed them, but we didn't do it, but I knew who did it. We was going through a playground. They pulled up on them. I told everybody to stop, hold on, wait. And I pulled out one gun, they just started shooting. Everybody took off running back up the block. I was walking, I didn't run. I just hear bullets flying. I see them windows being shot out, house windows, car windows. I'm like, I don't care if I live or die, I ain't scared. And that was my first introduction into that world of shooting. In the city, which is all East End, Louisville was, or anywhere else, man, you don't be disrespectful unless, you know, you can back it up. We teenagers, man, you know, we in high school, playing basketball in the projects like we always do. You know, we got a bunch of guys out there shooting, talking ----, you know, that's just what we do. You know, one guy's getting the better of the other guy, and they getting into it and stuff, and, you know, everybody ratting on him. You know, we used to be like, man, well, stop jolting that fool, man, let that fool get mad. He's like, man, I ain't gonna get mad, but he's getting his ass busted on the basketball court. My friends, he hit a jump shot. Boom. Oh, man, you have to find somebody to guard, man, because you can't guard me. The other guys get mad. They walk off, but they said some things when they walked off. Like, man, I'm gone. I'll see y'all later. So we thinking he leaving. The other man, he's walking over, right? He's coming back to the right. Oh, this fool coming back to play. Man, he walked straight up to our partner. He's like, man, the worst happened. Bust. Boom. In fact, shot him dead from a basketball game. Blowed his brains out right there in front of us on the basketball court. That's the world we live in, these unwritten rules about respect. There's also our morals. Now, if somebody else on the outside looking in, they'd be like, man, that's horrible. They're kids. Everybody in the hood got PTSD, man. Everybody.