- Yo, you know, as I was
growing up in the hood, you know what I mean, becoming a gang member from my hood because all my family were gang members, my brothers and sisters, my little brother, you know? Coming up in the hood, you know, I wanted to be what they
call up, the hood star because of the fact that, you know, we had a lot of homies from the hood and a lot of them made a lot of treacherous things, you know. Some of them robbed banks, we had a crew of bank robbers, we had a crew of drug dealers and then we had a crew of
dudes that put in work. You know, I was the type of
individual where, you know, I didn't my other homies to get at me and tell me, hey, you know,
you ain't putting in no work, you know what I mean? You aint doing what your
supposed to do, you know. I didn't really want
them to tell me anything. When my older homies came,
I got into a point where at the age of 15, I was doing things that my homies are 21, 25, they were doing because the fact that, you know, I got schooled by a lot of older cats and my neighborhood were I'm from, which is Canta Ranas, you know, we're real involved with a lot of shit, you know what I mean? We're involved with a lot of, you know, stuff like, you know, we're
like the number one gang in the southeast for a long, long time. We had the most big
homies which are, you know the guys in charged and we were you know, destined to run the area
for many, many years, but, like, when I was 15 years old, we had maybe like seven youngsters and what happened was, you know, we went through one summer
and everybody got busted, everybody was busted, I
was the only one out there by myself, you know what I mean? And I was going at it
maybe like three or four different gangs. I was getting shot at
every weekend, you know, I can remember occasions where I was walking into the Denny's one time, I turned around and a guy shot at me seven times, point blank range, missed me, you know shot at me inside Denny's. You know, the cops came, I took off running, back to my hood and, you know, I knew this guy that had shot at me, seven times and I was only 15 years old, you know? I already got shot at like nine times, nine different occasions. But this one occasion
I got shot at Denny's you know, it was really,
really close, you know and that was like the first time that I really wanted to
pick up a gun, you know? So, I wanted a gun and I ain't care where it came from, what it had on it, you know what I mean? It didn't matter, you know, but I was young, I end up paying, I think it was $40 for a .22 revolver. Yeah, it was a real small gun, but I remember I got it, you know, I cleaned all the bullets off, I loaded up my gun. I was 15 years old, it was maybe about 1989, maybe 1990, so things were really popping in the hood. While I was by myself, you know, and one day I'm kicking it, you know I'm by myself and I'm thinking, you know, my homies are getting shot left and right, my older homies are getting
shot left and right, and I'm the only youngster out there and you know, the pressure's on me, you know, it's on me, you know, what am I going to do? I'm thinking, what am
I going to do, you know I was already selling PCP and I was only 15 years old. But I used to hide my PCP inside of three coconuts that
my grandmother brought from Hawaii, you know. She used to smell it because it was, these three coconuts used to sit on top of her TV. And the coconuts, the
head used to unscrew, so I used to unscrew the head and put all my bottles of juice inside the coconut and close it up. My grandmother used to be sweeping and she could smell the PCP, but she didn't actually know where it was coming from. Where it was coming from, was it was coming from the top of her TV, inside her coconut. So I left it there for months, I used to do, you know, deal dope out of her house and my grandmother, you know, she knew everybody from the hood, all my uncles are from the hood, you know what I mean? I remember, I came home one day and my grandmother stopped
me at the door, you know and she's like, you know, I
hear you're carrying a gun, you know, I was only 15 and I didn't lie to my grandmother, I told
her more or less, yeah, so what happened to my
grandmother, you know and she searched me down and she grabbed my gun and she'd put it away. Now, it was hard to get my gun, but due to the fact that
I had a younger uncle that was from my hood, you know, sometimes my grandmother
would take his drugs and I knew where his drugs were at, I also knew where the
needles where at, you know, the one that used heroin, you know, they wanted me to get needles, my grandmother was diabetic, I knew where all the needles was at, because I was a youngster. So, I used to get them needles, before I give them their needles, I used to want back my gun. So, I said, someone will go, okay, will you go get my gun and I'll get you the needles, get you whatever you want from
grandma's house, you know, because we also had what
they called, a black box. And that black box was stuff in there that was donated to my uncle because he was in Feds doing time. The black box, nobody was
able to touch that box. No one's ever getting money out of there, you know, you can put money in, but you can never take
nothing out, you know. Next to that black box, sat the rigs and everything else that my grandmother used to hold, so I used to sneak in there, go in there and get them and then give my uncle blue rigs and he would give me back my gun, I would give him back his drugs. So, I did that for like
a good summer, you know. And then, the end of the
summer was coming up, like three of homies had
got killed, you know, man. I was out there putting in work, you know I was putting in work, putting in work sometimes I would do things out there where I would come home and I wouldn't want to leave
for like two or three days because I was afraid of
what I did out there, you know what I'm saying? Some of the things I did out there were very, very treacherous, you know, a 15-year old shouldn't
even see things like these, but due to the fact that I grew up in a gang member and
a gang banging family, you know, I knew right and wrong from the beginning, you know. The only thing that I didn't know was I'm so young that would
always brandish my gun, I would brandish my gun, I will show people my gun, show people my gun and my older homies were getting at me like, hey man, that's not what it's for. But I was so young that I would keep brandishing my gun, brandishing my gun. Well, what happened was is that I had my gun on me and we were kicking back in my hood and we're like, our main street is Danville Blue Jay in my hood. And it's kinda difficult
to get in and out of there because the fact that
the street is so small, that we used to box people in. But at this time, I was selling PCP and people were coming from everywhere to buy PCP. I had it bumper to bumper in the hood where people would smoke it, just get stuck right there. They'd smoke a dipper and their girlfriend would
end up getting naked, the cops would come, you know what I mean and I was only 15 years old. You know, people would knock at my door, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, my grandmother would answer and they would say, hey,
I want 20 dip, you know, and I'd get in trouble
because my grandmother knew that I was dealing PCP, but she was asking me you know, are you dealing PCP
because people are coming 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, like my older homeboys
and homegirls would come and they'd be all spaced out on their PCP and they'd come and say, yeah give me a 20 and they'd be asking my grandmother, my grandmother like go in the garage and whoop my ass real quick and then tell me, hey
they want you outside, so I'd go outside and deal dope. You know, I did several
things out of my house, I dealt dope out of my house, I've shot at people in my house, you know what I mean? I remember one time I came home, well one time I went
out there in the streets and I was out there gang banging. I ended up seeing this
guy from the enemy hood and I see an enemy's car, I drove up on him, broke all his windows, shot at him like three times, I got away, I went and
partied at my homie's house. Well, the next morning when I came home, I see my grandfather in the front yard and he looked kinda mad. So, I walked up, he got a big ol' stick that he had cut off a tree and he pealed it down with his knife, he sanded it, he shellacked it and he let it sit in
the sun and let it dry, it was for my ass. But I didn't actually
know why he was so upset. So, when I get home, he tells me, hey, what the hell's going on here. you know, somebody shot
the house last night, come here in the front yard, so he took me to the front yard and in front of the house, he's showing me the holes and he showed me one hole and he goes, look through
that damn hole, you know, so I looked through the hole, and he says, you see what I see? And I'm looking, I'm looking and I'm like, nah, he goes, the fucking dogs
are playing in the backyard and I'm in the front yard. So in other words, from
the the front yard, I looked through my house and I can see the hole that went all the way through my house, all the way to my backyard, where the dogs were playing. So, my grandmother, you know, my grandfather, you know, he whooped my ass, whooped my ass and you know, my grandfather
used to think that I was the only one, out
of all his grandsons and his sons that didn't go out there and do the deed because I was the type of individual that if I did something, I kept it to myself because I felt that if you talk about it, it's like doing it all over again. So, my grandmother schooled me when I was a youngster, you know? She taught me how to
read people, you know? She taught me how more
or less to be a man, you know what I mean? I was made by a woman
and raised by a woman and you know, she schooled
me in every fashion you could think of, you know what I mean? I used to do missions, you know, my grandmother used to
ask me who, you know, don't go with anybody, go by yourself, your gonna do it by yourself, only you could tell on yourself, so, I grew up in a gang environment- - [Mark] This is advice
from your grandmother? - Yes, my grandmother. My grandmother gave me
advice due to the fact that my grandmother had like seven sons that were gang members- - [Mark] Oh, she do. - Yeah. She had one son that was, you know, one of those guys from the mob, you know, he was my uncle
and that was her son, so, she knew all the ins
and outs of gang banging. You know, when I lost my mother and father when I was a child, my father was from my neighborhood, he was big Casper, I'm little Casper, my mother was out of Norwalk, but they got together, had me and my brothers and sisters and I knew in the beginning of life when I used to go to my grandmother's for Christmas and Thanksgiving, I knew eventually that
me and little brother, we're gonna be from this gang that was so inside my family. - [Mark] How did you lose your parents? - I lost my parents at the age of 13. I was already kicked out of school, I got caught with and
ounce of weed at school, I was about 12 years old, they gave me what you
call independent study. Independent study, you know, you take your books home from school, do the work and then you mail it back in. Well, it was about middle of June and me and my mother and my father and my aunt and my niece coming from the bus stop, we're walking across the street, we only had to cross two streets and we will be at my house, we can see my house from the bus stop. But what happened was, we were crossing the street and it was my mother, me in the middle and my
aunt on the side of me and then my dad and with
my niece on his shoulders and his friend. What I remembered, the light turned green, it said, walk, so we started walking across the street, all I felt was a hit in my chest, when I fell back, I seen a truck go by. He struck my mother first, my mother went up in the air, he hit my aunt, my aunt went under the truck, he kept going, my mother fell back on the hood, rolled off the hood and he ran her over with the back tires. All along, my aunt was
stuck under the truck, her arm was stuck in the wheel shaft and when this guy stopped
maybe about 80 feet, he was still trying to take off, but he couldn't take off because my aunt's arm was stuck inside the wheel shaft. Now, I remember my father was running from my mother to my aunt, back and forth, and you know, they got hit by that truck and it kinda like ripped their clothes, so my father was trying to cover my mother and go to my aunt and he
was going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and then we lived right across the street and my older brother
and sister came running out the house. My aunt was dead on the scene, my mother died on the way to the hospital. Now, when my mother died, you know, they took us to this
little room in the hospital and they told my father that what happened to
my mother and my aunt. Now, I didn't know what
my father was thinking, but my father took us
inside the room where they try to save your life and then you die, they leave you in a room and, you know, they just
leave you on a gurney. So, he took us inside there and it was one of the
most gruesomest sights I've ever seen in my life. You know, my aunt and mom
are laying side by side, they still had the plastic
tubes in their mouth, where they're trying to give them oxygen, but they were just filled all the way to the top with blood. You know, you couldn't even recognize my aunt and my mom from their body being so bruised and battered from that
truck that him them. So, once the truck hit them, you know, we automatically never
went back to the house. My father told us, no one's
going back to this house, no one's gonna step in
this house, you know, we're gonna leave it just the way it is. So, I was like, okay, you know, my father was my best friend, you know, and then about two weeks past, and my father started telling me that he couldn't accept what had happened and my father's my best friend, he used to share with me everything. So one night, about a month after it happened, he turns around and tells
me before we go to sleep, he telling me, tomorrow
I'm gonna kill myself. And the way he told me was more let's say, he was gonna check out. Those are the words he used, he told me, I'm gonna check out. And I was already from my hood, 13 years old, so I kinda
knew what he meant, but I begged my father all night not to kill himself. But, I knew he had his mind made up. The only thing that I had asked him was why did you come to this conclusion that you don't want to be
on this earth anymore, you know, you're gonna
leave me and my brothers you're gonna leave me
and my little brother, who's gonna take care of us? He shifted all to my older brother, he said, your older brother
could take care of you. And I said, yeah, but
he's not my dad, you know, you're my dad, you know. I kinda was upset with him a long time because we seen the same thing and I lived with the image in my head, same way he lived with
the image in his head. For a long time, I was
upset with my father because he did kill himself. What he actually did the next day was he went and picked up
about two grams of heroin, he went to his best friend's house, he told his friend,
he'll go to the bathroom and get some cottons or something. He drew up two full rigs of heroin and slammed both of them, they couldn't even save him. My homies' sister was a registered nurse, she was there at the
house when it happened, she tried to save my father, but he was dead. And he killed himself 30 days exactly after my mother had gotten killed, but he had told me not to tell anybody. So I kept it a secret for 20 years, I never told anybody that my father was gonna kill himself. I didn't tell his mother, I didn't tell my brothers and sisters, I didn't tell nobody. My father was my best friend, you know, he more or less confided in me, he wanted me to hold that, and I held it for a
lot of years, you know. When I did come out with it eventually, half my family stopped talking to me. They stopped talking
to me for the same fact that they said I knew and
I should've told them, but, you know, my father
told me in confidence and I was gonna keep it to me, you know. The only thing I don't understand is we seen the same thing and one guy had told me, one time before, a guy asked me if I knew what hell was. And I told him, yeah. You know, fire everywhere, everything you read in the Bible. He's like, no. He was, I want you to do something for me. He tell me, close your eyes, so I closed mine, he was, picture the most
horrifying, gruesomest thing you've ever seen. So, I'm thinking, he was, you got it? And I say, yeah, I got it. I pictured my mother and my aunt getting killed in front of me. Now remember, I was walking with my mother and my aunt. My mother pushed me out the way and the car killed her and my aunt. The car was suppose to also kill me, so my mother saved my life, but I used to see the
whole thing transpire right in front of me because it happened in front of me, maybe four feet in front of me when the truck hit my mother and my aunt. And he hit them very hard. The guy was driving a
school district truck, he ran a red light on his lunch break, he was drinking, they only gave the dude three years. He killed my aunt and my mom, he only got three years. He didn't get a drunk driving, he just got vehicle manslaughter, but it was an accident, which he ran a red light. Yeah, my family sued, you know, for that and me and my
brothers and sisters we got a settlement, you know, we got a lifetime, you know what I mean and, you know, but it
doesn't mean the fact that it brings back my mother. But the thing about it was is the way I remember my mother is, I never heard her cuss, they used to call her Sister Mary, she went to church three times a week, so, I wasn't too worried
about where my mother went when she passed on because
I knew she was going with who she believed in. But, now my father's case was something totally different, you know. He was my homie, he was a heroin addict, he had tattoos, he ran around the hood, he drank a lot of Thunderbird and I remember I used to wake
up in the morning with him and he used to get ¢85 for a pack of Camel
non-filtered cigarettes, ¢98 for a bottle of
Thunderbird, T-Bird, you know, he use to get a bottle of that and then he used to get $25 for what you call a guchara, a spoon of heroin. But back then, I remember my father used to slam his heroin and he'll only slam one time a day, just in the morning and he would be set the whole day. Nowadays, you cannot, you get to slam like
five, six times a day, you got to inject it like five, six times. Back when I used to see him, he used to get one spoon, $25 and it used to last him all day, you know. So all through my life, my father was a heroin addict and my mother didn't even used drugs. I guess, you could say opposites attract. But I see my father come home, sometimes bloody, sometimes drunk, sometimes high on heroin, he's O D'd a few times, you know, but, yeah him and my
mother were opposites. But when my mother got killed, my father couldn't accept the fact that he was gonna be here alone. But the one mistake he made was, he had told us, nobody
goes back to the house, leave it as is, the way my
mother had it and everything. Nobody went back, but he messed up and he
went back by himself. He said that he went back to the house and he's laid in bed that he and my mother laid in for 20 years. And he said, if I'm alone, he couldn't take it without her, you know. I tried everything in the book to have him not kill himself, but I came home from school the next day and I was at the park with my homies, I was already emulated, to where we were out smoking, and I remember my aunt came to BW and she was crying and she
wanted us to get in the car. And I didn't want to get
in the car, you know, and she looked at me and she like, get in the car, I need
to tell you something. I tell her, I already know, my father's dead. She looked at me and wondered how I knew, but my father had already told me previous that he was gonna kill himself, I just didn't know exactly what day. He waited for 30 days exactly and killed himself on that day. So, while I lost my at one month, and then I lost my father the next month. So me and my little brother, were worried about who was gonna raise us. That's when my grandmother stepped in and took the reigns and raised me and my little brother. Mind the fact that she already had raised seven sons and all of
them were from the hood, except one of them. She had just finished... The youngest one was like 23 years old, but me and my little brother, we moved into my grandmother's house and we knew that this was the starting of our gang life. You know, because my uncles
used to hand us their clothes and we used to dress up because my grandmother wouldn't buy us no gang-related clothes, not for the first year we lived with her. She used to buy us tight ass jeans, tight ass shirts, she wanted us to dress different and my uncle's weren't
allowing that, you know. Because my uncles were prepping
me and my little brother to be the next ones from the hood, along with maybe four
or five of my cousins, there was about eight of
us total from the family that were young and we were from the hood. But my uncles were prepping me and my little brother to be, you know, would've say, maybe the
most treacherous youngsters within our hood and at that time, me and
my little brother were. We were putting the most work, we had the most dudes that
ducking and dodging, I mean, girls used to tell us in their hood when they heard we were coming, they would go and stash, they would go and hide, you know. Sometimes we weren't
even going over there, but we would just put in so much word that every hood was... a lot of hoods were fearing us, we wanted to be the hood star. Well my little brother told
me one time as he said, he goes, I'm kinda
upset with God, you know and I was like, okay,
I understand, you know, but what do you mean? He's like, yeah, you know, God took my mom and my brother was the
favorite of my mother. He said, yeah, God took my mom, you know, he telling me, why don't we try to overpopulated heaven, you know, and I was like, what? I thought I heard him wrong and I said, what did you say? And he's like, let's overpopulate heaven. It's impossible, you
can't do that, you know. Me and my little brother went on a spree where of on our records,
we've been picked up for like, seven hot
ones together, you know and separate ones. But, you know, me and my little brother used to put in a lot of work and my little brother
had the mentality that, he actually thought that he was gonna overpopulate
heaven, you know. He went away when he was 14 years old for attempted murder, you know what I mean and he got back out and
we ran the streets again and you know, we lived
in my grandmother's house and my grandmother's house was like the main spot for our gang. You know, people used to
come there to visit her, you know, come drop off
things for my uncle, people used to go leave money, go leave, you know, food, dope and my grandmother was like the main grandmother from the hood,
you know what I mean? And they use call her Big L. She was also United Parents, back then they had United
Parents where they used to get in the gangs and get the girls and guys and they would buy them jerseys and they would play soft ball. And she did that for like
about 10 years, you know. I remember I was growing up as a youngster and I used to see my uncles and my aunts playing soft ball, you know what I mean? I always was in my hood,
all the time, you know, and my family, there was seven of my aunts and seven of my uncles and I think, one of my aunts and one of my uncles wasn't from the hood, but the rest were and all their kids. So, I was like a third
generation in my family. The next generation was my child, my daughter was from my hood also. But we got prepped in a fashion where, when we were nine, 10 years old, we got sat down, first thing we were told is never tell. You know, we were taught,
were embedded in us that that never tell, never call the cops. You know, I called the cops one time because my car got stolen, but it took me three hours
just to pick up the phone and call them because I've
never called the cops, I was always the one to deal, I am the cops. If something would happen with my family, or something would take place with us, I would take care of it, I wouldn't call the law. I was the law. I had a gun just like them, but I wouldn't have to
abide by rules like them, you know what I mean? And my family, once I turned 16, I was the sole provider
for my whole family. Growing up in my
grandmother's house, you know, we knew the rules to go by, when we needed to be and you know what, a lot of times when my mother and father were alive, there was times in being my little brother wouldn't even come home for two days. And we were like, nine and 10 years old, 10 and 11 years old. We got to my grandmother's
it was the same way because of the fact that her house was open like all night. You know, I remember they use to play poker on her table. Her and all her friends,
couple of my aunts and uncles and it used to be like
10 of them, you know, and then, we used to go into the back door and sneak in weed, we're sneaking in guns, you know. My grandmother used to
wake up in the morning and she used to walk around the yard, and she would just collect guns. One time, I see her walking with like six guns, two rifles, a shotgun and she collected these
just out of yard at home because we used to set the guns, you know, by the bricks, by the bush, you know, because people used to shoot
at our house all the time, so we used to always shoot back. As we got a little older, we started realizing how
my uncles were doing it. Where they stashed the guns, where they stashed the dope. My house was really, really active. We used to get raided a lot, you know, the FBI was on my family because of my uncles and the Feds when he was doing his thing. You know, it was really,
really heat on my house, but at the same time, we used to put in a lot of work, we used to go do a lot of things to a lot of people, you know. We used to break windows
in people's houses, we used to throw cocktails
at people's houses, you know, we'd fill bottles with gas, put a fuse in there, light it and throw it on people's cars. But, I didn't realize until later in life that my grandmother looked at me better than she looked at anybody else. You know, kinda feeling
she was always on me, you know, but she always
used to tell me things like, I remember one time I was
in jail and I called home, and I asked my grandmother about my uncle. She told me she had gotten
a letter from my uncle and I had told her, oh, yeah, you know, how's he doing? He had, had to be 399 years with a life sentence in the Feds. - [Mark] How many years? - [Johnny] 399 with a
life sentence, my uncle. He was one of those guys
where he had 399 years with a life sentence on top of that. - [Mark] Wow. - [Johnny] And he was
in Maryville, Illinois, three floors underground,
you know what I mean? And he was a really,
really treacherous guy. And I remember, I called
her on the phone one time from jail and I asked her, you know, how does he look? She said, (speaking Spanish). And my grandmother just
answered the question with, like a straight killer,
what else do you think? Now, I knew what my family was about when my grandmother
answered that question, I asked her how was her son and she said, well he
looks like a real killer, what do you think? You know, coming from grandmother, talking about her son like that, I knew what type of family I was involved when I heard that out of
my grandmother's mouth. Because that's her own son, for her to say, he looks
like a straight killer, what else do you think. Showed me that my grandmother knew what time it was all the way around, you know what I mean? To say that about your son, takes a lot, but my grandmother was just stating what my uncle really was. Because as I was growing up also, my grandfather fooled
around on my grandmother. My grandmother found out and jumped in front of a car, she tried to kill herself, in other words. When my uncle found out, my uncle sent word back to my grandmother if she wanted her husband took out. Now, that's coming from his son, you know, and I caught with it because I was there and I heard my grandmother's conversation and I heard my grandmother
say that her son got and asked her if he
would take out his own dad due to the fact that his dad was screwing around on his mother. So then I knew what time it was, my uncle. I just found out how my grandmother was, when I found out how my uncle was. So I knew I had to tread lightly when I did things in my neighborhood. I knew I had to keep my mouth shut and never say a word to the cop. You know, we ask for (indistinct), hush up, don't say shit, you know what I mean? Because it aces up from A to Z. You know, I had uncles that
showed me how to do this, I had an uncle show me how to do this, one showed me how to do drugs, one showed me how to take guns apart, one told me how jail
was gonna be, you know. I already knew that I
was destined for prison. All my family knew that
we're destined for prison because of the fact that,
that's the way it went. Juvenile hall, juvenile
camp, Y and prison, and we went through all those steps. And, you know, we used
to have get togethers at my grandmother's house and that's when all my
family gets together. I would see all my uncles, you know, they had frogs on them, you know, they've been from the hood, 20, 30 years and you know, I used to look at them and I used to idolize them. You know, I used to watched
the way they walked, what kind of clothes they wore, you know, what kind of drugs they did and I wanted to be just like them. I had nothing else in life, I didn't want to be a lawyer, I didn't want to be a cop, I didn't want to be a fireman. No, I wanted to be a cholo. I wanted to wear a hairnet, I wanted to wear big ol' pants, where you miss the first buckle, you go to the second
buckle and bring them in. And I used to be like, I used to have a waist like 26 waist and I used to wear like a size 48, Levi's. Now 48's are really, really big, you know what I mean, so I used to miss the first buckles and pull it from the second buckles. And we're talking about
size 48 pants, Levi's. I used to wear that, I used to wear maybe like a 2X sweater, you know, last of the
cholos that wear a hairnet was my generation. You know, we used to wear a hairnet, a beanie, you know what I mean. I already had my teardrop on my face, so you know, we're gang-related from when we're very, very young. I remember exactly when I got in my hood, it was the summer of the seventh grade. You know, we had just got out of school, you know, it was summertime, we got bored and we
were like running around all these cities and
nobody had youngsters, we didn't even have youngsters. I think the youngest
guy from my hood was 23. So me and my little brother and my homies, we started my hood back to life. Now we thrive strong. We're one of the deepest in southeast L.A, there's a lot of us. But back then, there was
only seven youngsters and we took on the role
of keeping the hood alive. So, we kept the hood alive. I know all seven, I knew their names, where they were from, I grew up with these guys and maybe out the of the seven of us, there was only two of us
that are still active. The rest, a couple of them died, couple of them are doing life, and a couple of them just gave up, they don't want no part
in nothing anymore. And I respect that, you know, I think I'm the only one now that's still active. I'm 46 years old and I'm still active. I don't mean I'm out there gang banging and shooting at people, but you know, I gotta be careful because along the way, I
know I made a lot of enemies. I might not be an enemy of this guy that's gang banging in his hood today, but I might've shot his brother when I was a youngster. I might've put in work
in my homie's buddy's smoked one of his brothers. So he's taking it to heart, in these situations where I seen a dude and he wants to kill me and
I don't even know this guy. Next thing I find out
that I stabbed his brother when I was 17 years old. This was 20 years ago, but due to the fact that I did some harm to somebody's family, it still runs in the blood, you know. So, I gotta be careful these days when I'm right here in downtown or I'm walking the streets, I gotta be careful that some youngster would just be coming from behind and cap me, shoot me in the back of the head because I did something
to his brother previous. Also, I used to be with a lot of women and I had a lot of problems like that. With their boyfriends, their brothers because I used to be with women that were from enemies of mine. Because I used to want to
pump them for information. One of my uncles schooled
me in that fashion. He said if you want information
on somebody else's hood, be with their home girls, they'll tell you everything in their hood. And sure enough that's what I did. But also I've been set
up seven times by women. I've been stuck in a house where they surrounded the whole house and the only way I heard them was I heard, I was laying with this girl and I heard outside the window, shh, he's inside. I heard this through the window. Now I remember previous, this girl had showed me her dad's Mossberg shotgun that he had in the closet, so what I did was I went in the closet, grabbed the Mossberg, cocked it, went to the front window, and shot one time at the front window. By the time I got outside, all these guys were gone. But I knew that the broad had set me up, so I waited a few months and I set her right back up. She ended up getting two
of her cheekbones busted, she got her leg busted, her elbow busted, like four of her front teeth knocked out, they dragged her for like about 15 feet on the side of the car. You know, she was really messed up, but she had set me up, that same fashion. Because, you know, I was
doing a lot of shit out there and putting a lot of work in other hoods and I was like on the top of their list, till you're tooken care of. They were even rolling around said they killed me already. I mean, like four different times, they say, ain't you dead? I thought the guy's in
(indistinct) said they killed you. And I was like, man, they're
saying they killed me, I'm right here and they
ain't killed nobody. But it was just the fact that I used to synchronize and go to a certain hood, I'm make it like five times a day, most of your average guy would go maybe once or twice. I would go five times a day, all throughout the day I would hit them at 6:00 in the morning, 12:00 in the afternoon, 3:00 in the afternoon, 6:00 in the evening and then I would just
hit them left and right, I'd go, I'd go, I'd go at them. Mainly I'll go, and then we had the master key to all Toyota Celicas from '87 all the way to '90. We had the master key and the master key you just open the door, same key for the door and the ignition, so we never pulled the ignition, we just had a shoe box of keys and before we left the house, one or two keys we would
stick them in the pocket. If we got stranded way
over there, far away, we just walked down the street, look for a Celica, didn't matter what it looked like, we're getting in it, the keys, open the
door, start the ignition and we'd be gone. I mean, I stole so many Toyota Celicas- - [Mark] That's a getaway car. - Yeah, they was pitiful. That's how I learned how to drive. A stick shift, was by burning like three clutches, but I learned. I was only 13 years old and I'm already driving a stick shift. I remember, I stole this one Celica, it was so nice one time. And we're walking from far and I told my homegirl, you know what? I'ma steal this car right here. So I ended up stealing the car, we all got in and I remember I got to a stop light, and a cop hit the lights behind me, boom. And I told my... It was me, my homegirl,
my homeboy, my homeboy, my homegirl, my homeboy, six of us in the little Celica and my homegirls, they were
pretty big girls, you know, they were called the cheeseburger sisters, so you could imagine, they
were big assed bitches. They used to be the gorilla gang, because they used to be guise
up, you know what I mean? So, they're in the car, the cop is behind me, he hits the lights, I hit the gas, boom. So we're going down the main street, we're coming up to a red light, I tell my homie and my homegirls, duck, I'm running this red light. So every light I hit like, six red lights, every time I came to a red light, all I would do was hit the gas, duck my head down and
go through the red light without even looking. I did that for six lights, I remember. We cam all the way from uptown Whittier, all the way to Norwalk and there's nothing but... We hit nothing but red lights, but I stop for no lights at all. I just, as soon as we're
gonna come to an intersection, I would just tell everybody to get down and I'll put my head down and we'll just go straight through. I didn't want to see no car
coming to hit me, nothing. So, we went through six lights, what end up happening is, I'm coming down the street and there's little streets
cutting off to the side. So what happens is went and cut down these little streets and get away. But, as I turn the car to cut
down this street to my left, there's so much weight in the car that the car locks up and I slide up a curve into a feed store, where they sell chickens, rabbits, I killed a gang of rabbits, killed a gang of chickens because I went inside the feed store. When I went inside the feed store, I remember coming to, and the car's smoking and everything, my homegirl is leaned over the dashboard, on top of the hood. My homie sitting shotgun, he has a crack in his forehead, I hit both my knees right here, hit my chest on the steering wheel. So we grabbed my homegirl from the hood and we pulled her back,
glass and everything. We pulled her back and we pulled her back, she has a cut like about this long, all the way on the top of her head, it's just open. I remember looking at her and she tells me, run homie, run. I'm like, oh, shit, so I grabbed my gun from
the bottom of the seat, I climb out the driver window, and I take off running. I remember, I'm running, whew, and I stashed behind this lady's wall, so I'm listening to see what I'm hearing, I'm breathing hard, I'm trying to control my breathing because I'm so tired from
running from the cops. But then I hear, like a (clicking sounds) and then I hear (panting sounds) and I'm like, oh, fuck. I don't remember there being
a dog anywhere in here, so I peeped out like that, what is it? It's a K9. I see the cop right behind him and it's a big ass German Shepherd. So I take off running the opposite way, the only thing I can hide under, I see a UPS van. So I get under the UPS van and I'm hiding under the UPS van, and here comes the dog, I see him coming, I'm like, oh, shit. What happen was the dog
runs right into the UPS van, looks dead at me and then starts running around the UPS van. Now I found out afterwards that the reason the dog
didn't come and get me is because he could no
longer smell my scent. I guess the fumes from
the UPS van being running, he could smell my scent all
the way to where he ran up, but I'm telling you, I'm laying under the UPS van, and he's looking directly at me, I'm thinking he's gonna
come bite my face, no. He runs around the van, runs around the UPS van, when he gets to that corner, I ran out the other way. So I'm running and I hear
him running on the driveway and I hear him right behind me. I can hear his nails hitting the ground, like a horse (galloping sounds) and I'm like, oh, shit. I go into a backyard, and there's a fence, then a wall. I climb up the fence, I grabbed the wall, picked myself up, he
tries to jump and get me, he can't jump that wall. So I'm like, I'm good. Well, when I jumped down the wall from the other side, when I landed, mind you when
I hit the steering wheel, the dashboard hit both
my knees and split them. So when I hit the grass, I fell to the ground, boom. Now I couldn't, I don't know, my legs have went out I guess
from the impact of the crash. So I'm in this backyard, I hear the dog barking on the other side, then I don't hear him barking anymore, so I'm dragging myself through the grass. While my homie that was sitting shotgun, he had ran the other way. I guess when we ran, I ran this way, he ran that way, but we circled around and
met up in the same backyard, the one I was dragging myself through. So my homie came out of the bushes, he's like, what's wrong? I told him, I can't walk, help me out, stash me somewhere, you know. So he grabbed me, he pulled me, he put me under the pool table in somebody's backyard in their patio. I'm under the pool table, and I remember, I'm
trying to catch my breath, and all of a sudden,
through that blue tarp, the dog just busted through, boom and grabbed me by my arm. So he started biting my arm and I remember he was biting my arm, I'm looking and he's just pulling my skin, you know, all these holes
on my arm right here, all these are from the K9, you know, so he's biting me, he's biting me. So as when he try to bite me in my neck, I put my hand up, he bit
me one time in this hand. While he bit in this hand, I grabbed him by the snout, by his nose and top teeth, then I grabbed his bottom teeth and I was just gonna try to rip his mouth because he already had bit
me numerous times, you know, he bit me all on this arm, he bit me like three times in this arm, my arm was leaking everywhere, I had those blood everywhere. But as soon as I grabbed him and I was gonna rip his mouth open, I remembered, leave my dog alone, and hit me in the back of the head, knocked me on the cement
floor that I was on by the side of the pool table. When I came to, I hear the cop asking me where my homie was. Now my homie, mind you was right in this garage door right here, because I was in the patio, he went into the garage door and left me under the pool table. Well, as soon as he was
asking me for my homie, he had the K9 snapping at my face, now I was in handcuffs, some lady comes out of her
house that owns that house and she tell the cop, leave him alone, he's just a child, I
was only 14 years old. So, I could imagine how small I looked, through all these grown men with a dog, biting the shit out of me, so I didn't give up my homie, what does he do, lets the dog go on me again. So now the dog bites my leg, tears me two bigger holes in my leg because I couldn't do anything, I was handcuffed, so I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, man, I'm asking, begging
him to get the dog off me. Five minute fell, five minutes, three, four, five minutes later, another dog comes through the gate, he's on my homie's scent. So my homie hear me screaming and yelling, the dog runs up to the door, I can hear my homie on the
other side of the door saying, I'm coming out. Too late, when he opened that door, that dog jumped up, hit him in his chest, my homie fell and I heard my homie scream. I've never heard a man
screamed like that in my life, that dog bit the shit out of him, tore up both his legs. Well, you know, the one
thing my homie told me when we got busted, because they took us to
the general hospital, they put us on the 13th
floor, the jail ward. First, he took us to the Pico hospital, fixed it up, then the
sent us to the jail ward in USC, the general hospital alley, downtown general, and they put us in the 13th
floor in the jail ward. You had be 16 years old and
up to go in the jail ward. Of course in the jail ward, I remember my homie looked over and leaned over and looked at me and said, man, you didn't even give me up when that dog was biting you. He said, I would've gave you up. If the dog would've bit me, or while it was biting me, I would've told them
exactly where you're at. He goes, Johnny, you never
told them where I was at. See I wasn't even tripping that my homie was in the garage and he can hear everything, because they kept asking me, where's your homie, where's your homie, I didn't give him up. They let the dog go and the
dog started biting me again, they were still asking
me, where's your homie, and I didn't know. I knew where he was, but
remember I was schooled a long time ago not to ever
tell on anybody in general. Don't sign no papers, don't talk to nobody. And remember my homie already told me that and he goes, you didn't even break, man when they had the K9 biting you, and I was like, nah-uh,
I wasn't gonna break. So what happened was, I
couldn't sue or nothing, because they were Pico sheriffs, they let the dog go, I
got a high pursuit chase after the shooting. They tried to put the
shooting and me together and high speed chase, I wrecked. My homegirls didn't press no charges, one broke her pelvis in the back, she limps today, another one has a big
ol' scar on her forehead, but my older brother ended up marrying their older sister, so
they're part of the family. That was one time when, you
know, the cops chased me, sink K9s on me and I
knew they were playing for keeps then, you know what I mean. I knew that it was on
and popping, you know. After that, if I seen a cop
pull up with a K9 in his car, oh, I wasn't trying to run. No way a cat would outrun a dog, you know, especially the K9. If their on your scent,
they'll cut through anything, they will climb walls,
they will jump fences. - [Mark] Did you do any
prison time for that? - No, I did camp time for that. - [Mark] Camp time, yeah. - I went to camp for that, and then my uncle went
to camp and did a year, my other one did a year, and I did nine months
in camp for that alone. You know, they try to
get me for the shooting, they couldn't place it,
the time was messed up, so they just got me for the GTA, but I already had seven GTAs prior. I had a total of 11 GTAs
when I went to camp. - [Mark] (indistinct) - Oh, yeah. We had the master car to go to Saragossa, and we used to steal all of them. Some of them would be run
down, you know, and cheap. Some of them would be nice
ass cars with systems. You know, we found so
many things inside them, we found guns inside them, we found dope inside them, money inside them, you know, all kinds of power tools, you know, everything you could
think of inside a car, you know what I mean. And we used to take these cars and we just take everything out them, use them to go do some shootings and then leave the car there. I burst whole many clutches, you know, it was pitiful, you know. - [Mark] So really I interrupted you when you were telling the story about was it your grandfather, you had a bullet go through the house? - Yeah. What happened was the guy
came and shot with a 3030 and those bullets are like
three and half inches long. And my grandfather, when he said, look through the hole in the front yard, and I can see the dogs
in the backyard playing, he made it sarcastically,
but you can actually see all the way through the backyard. And my house sits down here and then there's a hill that comes down, so the guy shot from an angle. The same guy, I went and broke his windows and shot at him, the day
before, the previous day. But before that day, he went and broke all my homegirl's windows. So what is was is, he broke my homegirl's windows, she came to me and told me, I went and broke his
windows, shot at his house, and then the following day, he came to shot at my house. Well, that's the day my grandfather found out that I was doing the dirt. And as he was talking shit, hitting me, I remember telling him, just read your paper like
you do every morning. Because he was telling me, what are you gonna do about it, what are you gonna do about it? I told him just read
the paper every morning. Well, about a month later, I remember my grandma gets him his paper, handed the paper, now mind you, I've been home for like three days, I ain't went nowhere. So, he gets his paper, he looking, he's reading it, and I remember he stops, he looks up at me, he looks down at his paper, he drops his paper and he
never talked to me again, ever. And my grandfather raised me and my little brother, you know, he just never spoke with me ever. When I went to prison and in court, he went to every court date, but he never spoke with me, he never spoke to me, not a word. I guess, my grandfather was upset because he actually felt that I was the one that wasn't
out there hurting people, shooting people, but little did he know, I was the main one. But when he found out, he blamed himself because
he remembers the day that he took me and showed me the bullet holes in his house and told me that I wasn't
doing shit about it. So when he read his paper
and he looked at me, he put two and two together and my grandmother told me after years that he was acting like that, that the reason he talked to me because he felt that it was his fault that I ended up the way I ended up, because I was sent in prison and he felt that it was his fault. Which it wasn't his fault at all, I was gonna go back anyways, that was my thing. We're gonna go back and forth, back and forth till one of
us can't go back no more. But the thing about it was is that now I had to remember these
two shootings in my house with 3030 and it's going
through every wall, so he's out to get somebody, so I ended up getting this dude, putting him the hospital and he never came back again. I think, I seen him
previous like 10 years ago and he walks all messed up, you know what I mean? He got shot really, really bad. You know, he was the one that
I made pop lock on the floor. What I mean by pop lock is, I had a .22 rifle that sure shot 38 rounds and there were 22 bullets. And they way, when you hit somebody, you hit them so much that they actually look like
they're pop locking because you're just shaking
everywhere, you know. And I say, let's go make us some pop lock, and I used to let whole the clip up and watch a guy pop lock, you know. Then when they hit the ground, you hit them on the ground, now their break dancing because
they spinning, you know. A lot of people would spin, you know so we were clown like that and say, hey let's go make somebody pop lock. And I remember I had their .22 rifle, I sawed the front of it off it had a banana clip, 38 rounds. I remember I used to beat it, my finger used to get tired from just pulling and pulling and pulling and I had that .22 rifle for like, whoo, shit, like two years I had it. And it saved my life a lot of times, it got me a lot of money, you know, it was like right there at
the right time, all that time. I never got a cop with it. That gun ended up, I ended
trading it for somebody, for another guy, you know, because I used to go like
all the way to Compton and trade those guys for their guns. We used to trade guns. I used to give all my hot shit and they give me all their hot shit. So we got cut down here in southeast L.A, we were gonna nest, winding over there in south central, well
their not gonna place us with anything over there because we got it over here, so we used to trade with guys. Every month, we used to do it. I used to have it like
clock work, you know, we used to trade it
where dudes used to come, we're like four of them, I would trade them four for four. You know, and it didn't matter what make it or was or anything, just four for four. And it didn't matter how many
murders they had in the gun, how many shootings it had, that didn't matter. We were just trading, I was just doing with the guys in east L.A, with the guys in SGV, and I got that idea from one of my homies that I looked up to, he was one of the most
treacherous homies I had, you know and he's the only one that could come in, get artillery after I used it. Because once I used it, I didn't want give it up. But they used send my homie
to come and get it for me because he was the only one that can get it from me, you know. I wasn't giving it up, that was just the way it was. I'm not gonna go place something in your hand that I used last weekend because they'll catch you with it, but they're gonna lead you back to me because nine times out of 10, most people are gonna say what the cop wants to hear when they have them in
that interrogation room. I've been slapped, I've been spit at, I've been grabbed at my throat, grabbed by my hair- - [Mark] By the cops? - Yeah, by the cops in the interrogation room you know, because I wouldn't say nothing. You know what I mean? When I was a youngster, I remember I got arrested
and I said a few words, then the cop changed everything up, made me look like the bad guy. So I knew now, when I got arrested no matter what it was for, I ain't got a word to say, nothing. But I mean, some of
those cops would get mad with detectives and they'll actually grab you by your throat and grab you by your mouth, you know what I mean, and try to choke you on a chair, you know. And I know somebody's
looking through that glass, but they ain't telling this grown man to stop whooping on me, I'm only like 15, 16 years old and this dude's putting hands on me. I knew something was wrong, but at the same time, they wanted my family and me and my brothers so bad because we were doing so much shit that they just couldn't pin it,
they couldn't place it, but they knew that we're
coming out that house and we're selling a lot of drugs. we're, in other words we're
making the hood thrive. You know, because we're just doing it, there was a lot of us, I mean it was like a total of 15 of us. You know, my uncles and my cousins and we're all from the hood. So, you know, I was never
short without a homie, you know what I mean? I always had a cousin and he's my homeboy. You know, when we to school over here, I had a cousin going with me, or my brother going with me, so I was never really alone until that one time when I was alone out there for the summer. And that was the most treacherous
time in my life, you know. I did so much shit that summer where, you know, my
homies didn't even tell me anything no more. They used to just come, dropped me off an ounce of dope, trade me guns and just leave. They wouldn't tell me, oh, we need you over here, they use to scold my other homies and I'd be sitting by myself, just listening to them because they couldn't tell me shit. Because I was doing
more than half my homies that were already from the hood, putting work when they were youngsters that already had surpassed them. I went way past them. You know, and my hood was very, very what you call, they're very on line with their rules. We had certain rules, we couldn't get a frog on our skin unless we earned it first. You know, when we put the hood, we didn't put not click, we just put the hood, no click. You know, we're made not
to say anything to anybody. Not to spread no kind of rumors, not to talk about anybody, not to say anybody's a rat without having black and white. Never put any type of blame on anybody unless we have paper work in front of us. And, you couldn't be from my hood unless you were raised in, breaded and raised there or you have family members. Other than that, you
couldn't be from the hood. And it was so family orientated that it was just families and
we're all from the same hood. But I'm talking about moms, kids, and then their kids, you know we went generations. So, we're embedded with
everything my uncles had, all my uncles had been to prison already, they already had dealt
drugs, you know what I mean, they already ran around the hood. So we just stepped right in and we were laced up as we went along. I mean, we had the best dressed. Man, I remember people use to see me dressed all Bond, and
when they see me like, How the fuck did you get
that clothes, you know. I wouldn't tell them
it was my uncle's shit, I would tell them, well I
went and buy it at east L.A, but it was passed down from my uncles. You know, Charlie Brown
shirts, big ol' khakis, you know, Pendletons, they gave us so many shit that you know, my grandmother couldn't help but go in and swap it the next time and say, just grab what
you want, you know, because it wouldn't matter. She would buy us what she
would want us to wear, and my uncles would see us and say, you're not wearing that. Here, wear this, you know what I mean, so he will give us other shit and I mean, I felt good. Sometimes I'd be some room where I'd be the center of attention and I loved it. You know what I mean? They were like, where do you
get these clothes at, man. And my uncles, they just had closets full, closets full, you know what I mean? Like each day, I don't
think I wore the same thing once a month, it had so much in. You know, there's so many other things that you know, I did with them, you know I'll share with you, my
uncles took me on missions, you know they took me on my first mission to earn my teardrop, I
was only 14, gonna be 15. And they showed me the day
before I did the deed, you know, they showed me the deed would be they did. You know, my older brother did the deed, couldn't handle it. Got out the game right when he did it. He did it and just changed up, from being this guy that was treacherous and to being the guy
that was a straight pussy and disrespected. I guess he couldn't handle the deed he did when he had to do and
then he felt bad about it. - [Mark] Give that
story for the next time. - Yeah, I'll give that one. Yeah, I gotta tell ya, I got
some good shit for you, man. I've been thinking. All the time, some good shit, you know.
