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(moody blues music)

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- "Listen, if you shoot him, put two in his face.

"This gun is long but it's not that powerful,

"so if you shoot him one time, it's not gonna kill him."

He said that to me like it was good advice,

and gave me a little pat on the shoulder,

like he just taught his son how to ask a girl to prom.

I think I was 15 when I bought that gun, 15 or 16.

Newhallville is changing all the time,

and the more it changes,

the more it stays the same. (moody blues music)

There are specific sections that are owned

by certain groups of young men

and it's crazy that one small street, like a block,

something that could be maybe 100 yards in length,

can be owned so tightly that you could be afraid

to into go to that corner store

if you're from another section

and this is all just a couple blocks.

You can drive through the Ville probably

within four to five minutes and each section is so heavily

guarded, almost.

Strange.

It's like guerrilla warfare, it's like civil war,

all within a tiny area.

And sometimes these small sections or factions are allies.

Sometimes they get along.

And then other times,

they're beefing so hard with one another

that if you go to a specific corner store

that is in another person's area, there's a great chance

that you'll be shot at or killed or stabbed or robbed.

Where you get off at the bus stop is very important.

You gotta know what streets or what area you can walk to.

If you're from a specific area,

you may have to take the longest way home

just to walk all the way around to avoid another spot

that you're not allowed to go into,

(acoustic blues music)

where it's dangerous for you to go into.

And then if you go further down street up Dixwell,

there's Yale University.

Where everyone has a Starbucks cup and a peacoat on.

But inside the Ville,

it's a different world.

And I remember the terror on my mom's face all the time

and I remember the terror on my brother's face

and they would always say,

I used to hear this all the time,

all different points of the day,

"Henry, come inside right now,

"Henry, come inside right now."

At different points in the day and I never knew

how much danger I was escaping.

I never knew people were being killed.

I never knew people were being molested, like friends,

family, people close to me, houses next door,

I never knew that and to a certain degree, my childhood was,

it was like a sanctuary in the middle of hell.

Then at some point in time,

your innocent world just crashes.

It crashes around you.

My teacher had proposed that

my mother bring us some cups and some juice, some cupcakes

and some juice and some chips, some snacks or whatever

for this birthday party that she wanted my mom

to throw for me.

All the kids, whenever they had a birthday,

their parents would come in and they would bring in

some candy or something for the kids

and it was kind of the norm.

And she said, "Henry, go tell your mom to bring us

"some cupcakes and everything for the next day."

I go home, I ask my mom, of course she says,

the same sentence, "Honey, we can't afford it,"

so I go into class the next day,

when my teacher calls me up in front of her

and the whole class is staring.

It's dead quiet in the classroom

and I walk up with my head down

'cause I'm already embarrassed

and the teacher says, "What's wrong?

"Why didn't you bring the cupcakes?

"Why didn't you bring the juice?"

And I say, "My mom said we couldn't afford it."

And I'll never forget what this teacher said.

This teacher looked at me and said,

"It's only cupcakes and juice, you can't afford that?"

In short, I was poor. (laughs)

And you never know you're poor

until you're compared to somebody else, like food stamps,

I don't care what nobody say about food stamps, yo.

It's the most embarrassing thing to walk into a line

and swipe that card, I feel like,

and this may just me being paranoid,

but I feel like the cashier kind of gives you a side eye,

like this nigga's on food stamps, you know what I'm saying?

Okay, you didn't earn this, you know what I'm saying,

you didn't earn this, and all that made me angry.

It made me angry to the point where I did not want to use

food stamps, I didn't want to use my mom's card

to go and buy nothing, you know what I'm saying.

I hated going to the grocery store with her.

If she was gonna use her food stamps card.

I never said that to her but it was embarrassing.

And after a certain point, you start to lose it.

It be enough is enough.

You reach a certain limit.

You're wearing the same hand me downs every day

up through eighth grade.

If your brother's friends go to the same school as you

and he wears a shirt one day

and then the next day you're wearing a shirt

he was wearing the day before,

it becomes kind of hard to hide,

and it becomes kind of hard for kids to miss.

And you know what's crazy is that

everyone else can live in the same projects with you.

They could live in the same neighborhood with you,

but for some reason every time they walk to the bus stop,

they look fresh.

They still have a brand new jacket,

they still have good shoes,

they're dressed well and you're not.

And then you start to question, what am I doing differently?

What am I missing, what am I lacking that they have?

(moody blues music)

I always felt like other people loved me

more than I loved myself.

(moody music)

Every time someone would talk about me,

I would be confused, people would say things

and it's like, who are they talking about?

Then every now and then, like a teacher would pull me aside

and say something to me at the time which was cryptic,

they say, "You know, Henry, you're very talented

"and we don't want you to throw that away."

and my response would be like, "Cool, me neither.

"So, see you later."(laughs)

I didn't know what they were poking at.

Some people wanted me to go into acting,

people wanted me to, I had a teacher at Juilliard,

who was pushing me to audition at Juilliard,

because of a summer theater program I did,

and I had so many people saying

"You should do this, you should do this."

My response was, "I might."

I just for some reason, I just didn't care.

There were other things that were on my mind stronger.

There was so much more danger.

There was the danger that I never knew was around

started coming for me.

My little brother texts me and says,

"Yo, I just got robbed on our porch."

I get up out of class, I rush down there,

I go, I get a gun from my boy.

And I run down, we go around looking for this person,

because now he knows where I live.

He's gonna come back, so then I call other people

we go start looking for him.

And I go back to class the next day and the teachers like,

"Oh, well you shouldn't just get up

"and come out of class like that in the middle class."

And I'm like, "Somebody pulled a gun on my brother.

"I don't really care about my English paper right now."

I felt like everyone I knew was in danger all the time.

If I left my post who was gonna to protect them?

I don't know, it's easier to leave your post

when you feel like everything's okay.

If you feel like you leave your post

and someone's gonna die.

It's a scarier thought like how many people

will go to college if they thought

that their sister or brother will get shot

with them not being their?

College wasn't as important.

I didn't know what theater was for me at the time actually.

I don't think I knew it was important.

I didn't know what was important to me.

At that point in time, it was my fix

and what other people saw as my talent

and as a bargaining card for success,

I just saw as my fix.

Everyone was going to college,

everyone was applying for colleges and discussing,

"Oh, I'm going to Temple University, I'm going to NYU

"Henry, where are you going?"

But when people were asked me where I was going,

I had no idea.

And that's because I had no idea who I wanted to be.

I had two personalities that

were supposed to be joined into one

But my, I was split.

I didn't know how I wanted to be.

I didn't know who I was supposed to be.

I never did it because I thought I'd be

a professional at it one day.

I did it for myself.

And then when everyone went to college,

I had no direction.

I didn't feel worthy.

I didn't feel like I deserved it.

I felt like I deserved a new Haven.

My favorite book when I was in elementary school,

I read this book called "Nightjohn"

about this this slave who

you know what I'm saying in his circumstances,

would rebel against against everyone around him

'cause he would teach the slaves how to read

and he will run and help him escape.

And I wanted to be Nightjohn so bad, you know,

I wanted to be able to just rebel

against everything that I should be,

Nightjohn should be a slave,

he shouldn't be able to read.

He should listen to his masters

and I just wanted to rebel against that.

I wanted to be the best,

the best person at where I was

and lead them into the next phase.

I wanted to be that so bad.

I thought that was coolest thing ever.

Renegade, that name was a originally given to me,

by my brother, my little brother, Solomon.

The name means to defect or to betray,

to leave one group and become a soloist,

so to leave one group and to join another.

He originally gave me that name because

I never wanted to be exactly like everyone.

So then my little brother said to me,

"So you kind of like a renegade?"

And I was like, "Yeah, that's right."

I had to find some type of way

to name what I was doing positively.

Sooner or later, though, that name

began to mean something very different.

I had this dream of this guy, this powerful guy,

with no face,

chained in this room,

locked up with a chain and a skeleton key

hanging around his neck.

And this was the key to let himself free

but he sat inside this room

and just cried and cried and cried.

He had a key to himself free, but he didn't.

He was afraid to.

Somehow I began to associate that person with Renegade.

Kind of like my Jekyll and Hyde.

It wasn't what I wanted it to be.

Renegade was supposed to be the thing

that wasn't afraid of the streets.

He was supposed to be the thing

that wasn't afraid of people doing him harm.

The person that wasn't afraid to succeed.

But instead, Renegade became

a name for violence.

He became a symbol for apathy,

apathy for life.

And the more I said the name

the less I wanted to be Henry.

The double life thing probably started,

once I became afraid of where I lived.

If the thing that rules your neighborhood is fear,

then you do well there

and you either do well at being afraid,

or you do well at making other people afraid of you

so that you have less people to fear.

And at first, I did very well at being afraid.

I did really well at being afraid.

I remember being at the bus stop one time

and I was in like fifth grade.

And I remember some kid saying,

"Oh, I'm gonna fight you, I'm gonna fight you."

And I did not wanna fight.

I didn't know how fight.

In fifth grade, I was real skinny, awkward,

my ears was huge.

They're probably still a little big right now.

But you know, I didn't know how to fight.

So I remember trying to worm my way out of this

and asking everybody, you know what I'm saying,

"What do I do?

"I don't wanna fight him, I don't wanna fight him."

And I remember somebody standing me up straight and saying,

"Listen, you don't want niggas to think you're a pussy.

"If you don't want them to think that

"then you have to fight him."

Ronda won.

And I remember coming to this realization like

that there is no escape.

There's no escape from it.

If you want to escape, you have to make them afraid of you.

I became slightly addicted

to taking things from other people.

Even if it was I'm just taking their dignity

and a horribly violent way.

When it came to me targeting people.

I think, to me, my main enemy first

was people who I thought were gonna put me in harm's way.

Any person who that was was a target.

But mainly it was black people.

I mean, to be honest, I mean, a few Puerto Rican people

like it's New Haven.

So the colors that separated people were mainly gang colors.

That defined you almost as much as race did.

We divided ourselves in our own little subculture.

And that is how I was able to divide people in my mind.

So I had enemies based upon their faction,

and most times they were black and Puerto Rican.

The second enemy for me personally,

I think this was a personal thing for me

and a couple of people who I knew

were people who are of a higher class than us.

The thing about New Haven is

New Haven can be broke on one side of the street,

one side of the street, houses boarded up,

naked babies running around, crack noodles everywhere.

Liquor store and corner store and a church for some reason

on every corner, right?

You go 10 minutes up the street, mansions.

Why are there mansions, if I live in a project

down the street from you?

And you think you can walk?

You think you can walk through these projects,

and you gonna be street when you got a mansion?

Okay, that's what made you my enemy right there

is you're gonna live life to the fullest

right next to me when I'm in a projects, really?

That's what you're going to do?

So for me that made them a target.

And I didn't care what race you were.

I didn't care, that's not what made life unfair.

The thing that made life unfair was who had the power.

And either you have power through a gun

or you have power through cash.

And if you had power through cash,

I was a little more angry at you.

So if I could use that same fear that was used on me on you,

then that's your fault.

That's really what I thought.

And if I saw weakness in other people

that I once had to myself,

it made me hate them.

It made me hate them because

I was weak at some point

and I felt like it was my fault for being weak.

So I don't know.

Don't be weak.

It's your fault for being weak.

(upbeat music)

You know, I remember being downtown a lot in high school

and watching Yale students ride by on their bikes,

and they'd be going from class to class

from restaurant to restaurant,

enjoying life laughing, smiling all the time,

walking in front of traffic.

And no matter where we were, for some reason

us as kids, it'll be a group my friends

we'd be like 10 of us.

We were a problem.

The police would come over

and they won't want us in a group.

You gotta move here.

You have to do this.

This is school property.

But Yale's never had a problem.

They were going to a great school, they had great clothes.

They just were happy all the time.

And I felt like it was something,

I remember feeling like

this is something that they didn't deserve,

you didn't earn this.

I remember feeling that and I remember feeling angry.

And then I started to catch a pattern.

Whenever I would walk with my friends downtown,

it'd be a group of five, 10 of us,

you know, wearing all black hoodies.

And if they saw us coming, they would cross the street.

And at first, I didn't really take notice to it.

But after a while, I started to recognize

this look in their eyes.

It was this look of fear.

It was this expression of fear.

And for some reason,

my power was greater than theirs at that moment.

And these are the same people

that are going to one of the top universities.

And I'm more powerful than you right now

because you're afraid of me.

I was able to take their pride.

One, just because of how I looked.

If I could take your pride

you know, what else can I take?

Not only can I take your pride but I can take your bike.

If I can take your bike, I can take your phone.

If I can take your phone, I can take your cash.

And if I can do that,

then I'm more powerful than you.

I have control now.

And it's an addictive feeling.

You don't have control over anything else in your life

but you have control over this person.

What's funny is, it's never actually about the money

'cause you can't take enough from someone

to the point we'd be able to live off of it.

It's never about the money, it's about the control.

You have to somehow make it so that

you feel sane where you are,

so that you feel like I'm in the best situation possible.

I did that in school by getting good grades.

I did that in the streets

by inflicting fear when I needed to where I needed to

and materialistically I did it from taking from people.

It made me feel like I had control over my own situation.

I remember another time

when there was a kid downtown

who had said something to one of my friends

and someone comes from behind him.

One of my friends comes from behind,

and I don't even know if this kid said something

along the lines of

"Watch where you're going."

And that was enough,

that was enough challenge.

One of my friends come behind and smacks this kid.

You know like, right hook to the right side of his face

from behind.

And the rest of us come in and just start unloading punches

and kicks on this guy.

And we feel powerful

because we're able to make one person cower.

And this was actually a kid that was pretty big,

he wasn't a small kid.

And he's on the ground and we kick him

and we punch him and in these moments,

everything's happening so fast

that you don't wanna miss your chance

to be a part of the event.

You don't want to miss your chance to prove to other people

that when something happens, when something goes down,

you'll play your part.

And inflicting pain on a stranger is

it can be thrilling and it can be exciting.

Everyone around you is watching.

You hear the crowd reacting and it's like

you almost feel like a gladiator in a coliseum.

(acoustic blues music)

You know relating to Tybalt was probably

one of the easiest characters I've ever played.

I felt like he was me.

He said some of the things I would say

except in Shakespearean dialect of course.

He was me, Tybalt was angry and aggressive

but only out of pride,

only out of this desire to have what you don't have,

and to go and get that at any cost.

And I immediately saw the resemblance,

I saw the similarities between myself and Tybalt.

That we'd be willing to hurt other people

and hurt ourselves

to hold on to a piece of dignity

or a piece of pride or reputation.

Something that I think Shakespeare stories,

something that they do is he talks about pain,

I feel like in such a way that I was able to relate to.

He didn't sugarcoat anything.

When I was able to transfer like translate it

and understand the language,

suddenly this dude was reading out my diaries,

it sounded like, you know,

and he was speaking about things

that everyone is going through and no one listens to.

Then it stops being a play.

He stops being a character.

He starts being a reflection of your life.

You focus on on walking in their shoes

and breathing in their shoes and feeling emotion

from their perspective.

If there's no other way to forget

what you're going through

that's the way right there.

Acting in front of hundreds, maybe thousands.

Such a powerful classical piece with people

who are considered the cream of the crop

in the acting world,

and me coming from Co-op High School,

you know what I'm saying, coming from New Oroville.

It was real man.

I felt easily like the most important person on the planet.

After Romeo and Juliet was over,

I had so much idle time

and I lost contact with Henry.

I just had way too much time to be Renegade.

I felt like I didn't fully belong

in a world where people thought I was a great actor,

I was a great student,

'cause I didn't believe that about myself.

I didn't wanna go back to a world of fear,

paranoia and violence.

And I had no one to tell about it.

I was always looking to reach out to anybody.

I just had to wait for the right person,

and it had to be someone

who wasn't proud of me on either side.

It couldn't be someone who was proud of me in the streets

and it couldn't be someone who was proud of me

in the world of theater or school or anything like that.

I remember I met this girl

'cause it was always a girl who liked me whatever.

And I remember calling her

and her thought was, "Oh, I like Renegade,

Oh, he's gonna call me blah, blah, blah."

So she's all happy and everything.

And I remember calling her

and talking to her for a few minutes.

And I remember trying to vent to her

to tell her my situation.

I remember trying to tell her,

"Sometimes I don't wanna live anymore.

"Sometimes I wish that all I can do is be on the stage.

"I'm afraid that people are trying to kill me.

"And I need help."

And I never said that sentence before.

I never said that to anybody.

And this was a nobody girl, this was a nobody.

But I had to reach out to someone.

I said, "And I need help."

And I remember her reaction being,

"Oh okay, I gotta go, this is weird.

"You should call the police.

"I don't know, but I'll text you."

And when a girl says that,

you already know what that means.

She's not gonna text you.

She's not gonna call you.

That means, leave me alone, don't call me no more.

You did something to weird me out.

And I remember hanging up the phone

and feeling so alone

and feeling like I didn't belong in either world.

And I remember going upstairs

into my room and I had kept a gun inside of a book bag

that was inside of another bag that was inside of this box.

And I remember going upstairs and taking a gun

and staring at the barrel for a long time.

And the way a gun trigger works is you pull it a little bit

and all this power and fury unleashes all at once.

And I remember debating, could this end anything?

Could this help me belong in a better place?

'Cause I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere

and I did not like my life to the point

where I wanted it to end.

And I pushed the thought away and I put the gun back.

And I didn't talk to anyone about that.

But then I remember leaving

and hoping that someone would kill me for some reason.

And whenever there was a time

where I thought somebody was gonna be doing

something stupid I went.

(upbeat music)

Actually in the wintertime,

there's a term that everybody in New Haven anyway

that on behalf of wintertime they call it grimy season.

They call it grimy season

because during those months when it starts to get cold

and it starts to get dark early,

everyone becomes a little bit more bitter,

everyone becomes a little more violent.

The chance of you getting robbed increases dramatically,

the chance of someone doing a home invasion in your house

increases dramatically.

It's dark earlier, it's easier for people to do crimes.

And you can feel the transition into grimy season.

There was such an influx,

like an increase in violence in New Oroville.

I remember this one time we were walking up shouting

and we ran into this old guy who we knew

who used to be really well known.

He's just this old man.

He had a funny voice, really raspy voice

and he had a cane all the time.

And we ask him, "Yo what's going on, like what happened?"

And he says, "Yo, these three kids, they came up

"and I'm a old man and they they rob me

"and after I gave them everything I had,

"they still started beating me,

"they still started beating on me."

And me and my friends we're surprised like, "What?"

'Cause this is someone who no one really messes with

you know, he's an old guy,

everyone knows him around the neighborhood

and like who would do that?

And he was kind of telling us he's like,

"Yo, listen, y'all need to watch out,

"y'all need to be careful out here."

And he kept warning us about that.

As the violence increased in the Ville,

I expected it for there always to be

someone ready to attack me, someone ready to hurt me.

And it's like every couple weeks or every few days

you hear story about someone who you knew that got shot,

you hear someone that you knew that got cornered

and jumped and beat down by multiple people.

You hear stories about and these are innocent people,

some of them are bangers, some of them were criminals.

But it seems like everyone

was a target at this point in time.

It felt like a quiet night initially.

It was cold, dry.

Like a typical winter night,

real starry, I remember that.

Bus ride wasn't but four minutes from downtown

to get to my bus stop which was on Munson Street

and Dixwell Ave.

I usually get off right there.

I hopped off and my boy D-Eazy was waiting for me,

one of my little brother's friends.

Nice kid, wasn't involved in anything crazy,

not involved in any criminal activity.

He was just a nice kid that I liked to chill with.

I hopped off the bus and D-Eazy is all happy to see me.

He's dancing at the bus stop,(laughs) looking crazy.

This was one of those 'cause no matter where he was at,

he was always getting liked all the time.

I meet up with D-Eazy and he starts telling me about

this day that he had.

He starts telling me about this girl that broke his heart.

That's usually what we talked about,

you know, girls that broke his heart.

And during the first few steps down a block,

it just felt like a normal night,

we felt good, we felt safe.

And then we spotted these four boys

and there's a certain dress that people have

when you know that they're out robbing.

It's like standard, it's a black hoodie.

All black hoodie, hood up, a black ski mask, dark pants

and sometimes they have some gloves on.

And when I see people wearing this outfit,

I know that they're robbing.

They are dressed in a certain way

where no matter how you describe them,

the police won't be able to narrow them down.

I see these four people,

they're probably maybe like 20, 30 feet in front of me

and I'm walking from Munson up to Division by Moe's Market.

And I see them and they're walking slow.

I tap my boy D-Eazy and I say,

"Yo, look, they robbing people,

"you know what I'm saying, they're juxing."

So I say, "Yo, listen,

"let's just take this right over here."

I think it was Gibbs Street.

So we take that right and we start cutting down that block

in my hopes to avoid them.

I see these boys, they turn around, they look back,

they see that we turned down Gibbs Street

and now we're not behind them

and they make an about-face, they make a straight U-Turn

and come back and start speed walking,

they start increasing their speed.

So I know now they're targeting us.

And at this point in time,

you know that there's gonna be one of two inevitables.

You have to run away or you have to face them

and either deal with whatever harm

they're going to put towards you or fight them off.

So I know that there's no way out of this.

I start walking a little bit faster

and what's crazy is my house is not even

a five second, 10 second walk.

I didn't stop at my house.

I knew if I would have went to my house,

while these guys are behind me,

they would have known where I live.

They would have known where my family lived

and I didn't wanna bring that danger

to my family, to my house.

So I keep walking down Shelton Avenue

and they start speed walking faster.

At this point, D-Eazy is getting extremely nervous

and he starts tapping me saying,

"Yo listen, they following us, they following us man,

"we gotta run, we gotta run."

And in my mind, I'm contemplating what to do.

Because for me running means I've been defeated,

running means that they've been able to instill fear in me

and they were able to take my pride.

I know it sounds dumb and it doesn't sound like much

but that was the main thing.

That was the most important thing to me.

Most important thing to me was my dignity, was my pride,

was my control over myself.

Because I know D-Eazy isn't someone who wanted

to live a life of crime.

I know he was someone

that didn't want to be involved in violence.

I thought it would be unfair for me to turn around

and face them and involve him in that.

I wanted to face that harm alone,

I wanted to face that danger alone.

He didn't need that pride, he didn't need that.

So I tell him, "Listen, run."

I told him, "Run."

D-Eazy starts booking it fast down the street.

I turn around and I start walking up towards

these four kids that are all blacked out.

The first thing I say, I open my arms

and I say, "Yo what's good?"

When you say, "Yo what's good?"

that's the same thing as saying,

"Whatever you are ready to do, let's get it done.

"If you're gonna try to stab me,

"if you're gonna try to fight me,

"if you're gonna walk past me,

"let me know your intentions right now because I'm willing

"to handle whatever you gonna throw out at me."

So they walk up to me

and the youngest one of the group is short, light skinned.

It looks like he got he got braids underneath his ski mask.

He pulls out this shiny nine millimeter

and puts it right on my stomach, point blank.

And he says to me, "Yo, give me everything you got."

At this point in time I have another two choices to make.

I can decide to let go of everything that I have,

to release whatever bullcrap cash I have

which is probably a few dollars, maybe my phone

and then with it, my pride.

And I don't want to give up my pride.

And considering what's been happening

in the past few weeks,

everyone who's gotten robbed

has gotten beaten or shot anyway.

Why would I give up my cash

and my pride and then still take a beating.

I know the possibility of me getting shot is a little high

but I test those limits, I push those limits.

See the thing about the kid who was holding the gun

is his hand was noticeably shaking.

When you hold a gun to somebody,

when you hold any weapon to somebody,

when you're standing there

and it's your strength against their strength

and you're trying to rob them,

it's a scary moment.

Everything is on the line.

Your pride is on the line,

your self esteem is on the line really.

You're trying to conquer another person

mentally and emotionally.

You're trying to overcome them through intimidation.

And since I've done that to other people before,

I didn't want someone to be able to do that to me.

So my response to this kid is,

"I'm not giving you nothing, I don't got nothing for you."

Now me saying that, now I'm challenging him.

He tried to overcome me and I'm pushing back.

When you do this, the levels, the risk continues to rise.

He rises up here, he gave me you know what I'm saying

he put the gun on my stomach, gave me an ultimatum,

"Give everything you got or I'm gonna shoot you."

And I raise it here, "I'm not giving you everything,

"I'm not giving you anything."

So if you do want it, you'll have to kill me,

you'll have to shoot me.

The only way that that ends is one of us win.

(slow acoustic music)

And he has these three kids behind him that are all

egging him on "Yo shoot him,

"yo shoot that nigga yo, shoot that nigga."

And you can see in this kid's head,

he's having a battle inside his mind.

You know there's people behind him

that are watching him,

that are analyzing and critiquing his power,

that are critiquing the control that he has over me.

That are egging him on that are pushing him on.

And in his own mind, he is probably debating

'cause I'd be debating the same thing.

You know, what's worth it?

If I shoot this guy, I will get dignity, I will get pride,

I'll get the sense of control.

But the risk,

one, you're taking somebody's life,

two, jail time possibly.

And it shows how important pride is,

it shows how important control is.

If the benefit of getting pride

is just as high as the risk

or as higher than a risk of jail time

and of taking somebody's life, it's worth that.

In that world, it's worth that.

This verbal battle last maybe five seconds,

but if Feels like an eternity

because it's two lives clashing,

two lives with the same struggle.

And in the heat of this battle

and in the heat of this conflict,

I'm able for a split second,

I don't know if this was God giving me a moment

or clearing my mind so that I can see this,

so I can see beyond my primal instinct,

my Renegade mindset.

But I was able to clearly see

beyond this little world for a second.

For a second I was able to see beyond me versus him

and I was able to see beyond New Oroville,

I was able to see me on New Haven, Connecticut,

and this is only for a few seconds,

but I saw a lost child in this kid's eyes.

I saw a human being that was lacking something.

A human being that was lacking understanding.

I saw a human being that was confused and hurt and angry.

And I guess in that sense I saw a mirror.

I saw a mirror in his eyes.

And it's at that point that I see

the similarity between me and this young man.

I see how we're both broken.

We're both fighting for control

that we are lacking in our lives.

I see how we're both the same

in that brief second

and then the gun went off.

A lot of people asked me if I saw a white light

and the response that I give to people is,

at that point in my life,

there's no way I would have been seeing

a white light at all and that's just being honest.

There would have been no white light coming for me.

(slow blues music)

During the coma, I think the thing I remember most

was my dad coming to visit me.

See, like, I've never seen my dad cry before this,

and in a coma, everyone thought that I couldn't hear them

but I heard everything to the point

where I came back to people after I woke up

and I told them what they said.

My dad came in, teary eye and he said,

"How you doing H?

"You're gonna get out of here soon,

"everything's gonna be fine."

And then I remember him sniffling

and sang, "I love you so much son."

I never felt closer to my dad than at that point in time.

I couldn't hug him, I couldn't touch him,

I couldn't tell him I heard him

but I never felt closer to my dad.

And what's weird is the thing

that allowed that to happen was a bullet.

They changed my name from Henry Green to Stanley Galbraith

because the kid who shot me was running around still,

they thought that he might come into the hospital

to finish me off.

So they literally said we're gonna choose a name

that sounds really white,

so that no one thinks it'll be you in the charts.

During that entire time, the doctors were really just trying

to figure out a way for me to stay alive.

My femoral artery had been singed by the bullet,

the night of and when they were doing surgery on me,

it actually popped, it popped open.

And a femoral artery is one of

the much larger arteries in your body

so I lost so much blood.

Actually that night or those first three days

when they're trying to save my life,

I had actually flatlined three times.

So three times total my heart stopped.

They told me that they gave me a total of

I think 42 units of blood.

So a unit of blood is like the little IV bags of blood

so 42 units is enough to fill the body a couple of times.

That's how much blood I lost.

All the blood loss took a toll on my intestines

because the blood from my femoral artery was coming up

to make sure my intestines were getting oxygen

and getting life and when the doctors I had opened me up,

they told me later that they smell something rotting.

It smelled like garbage and the thing that was rotting

was actually my intestines.

They were rotting inside my body.

I heard one doctor say, they actually walked up to my mom

and they said, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

Of course, I'm still alive

but they thought that I was gonna be gone.

They started coming in and telling her,

"Listen, you have to let go of your son."

There was this one doctor who kept telling her

that "You have to let go,

"you can't keep holding on to him like this."

And the sad thing is about to be over

after I began learning who I was,

but I wasn't gonna give up there.

I remember the week when I had to learn

how to sit up by myself.

I felt like an infant.

I didn't have the abdominal strength to be able to sit up

'cause I've been laying down for months.

Imagine when you first wake up from just sleeping overnight

when you first sit up you're a little bit dizzy.

Imagine laying down and sleeping for two to three months.

The dizziness is unreal.

I had a practice first sitting up a little bit.

A little bit for each day.

I would sit up for maybe 5, 10 minutes a day

just to get the strength to sit up.

And they had to stand me up after a few weeks

and I took my first couple of steps,

steps that they didn't think I was gonna be able to take.

Sooner or later,

I was able to get myself around in a wheelchair.

And at that point in time,

they had moved me over to Gaylord Hospital

and here, I really started my rehabilitation.

I had to learn how to get around the house again,

I had to learn how to walk.

I had to learn how to get out of my bed and into a walker.

So I came from being this powerful, strong feared Renegade

to walking around with a walker

with a colostomy bag.

Really sharp contrast,

really humbling.

(guitar music)

I spent a couple months at Gaylord Hospital

and then I was finally taken home.

Still with no intestines,

some intestines enough to have a colostomy

but not enough to eat.

So I was I was attached to this bag which is called TPN.

Total parental nutrition I think is what TPN stands for

and this is bag of white fluid that they hooked up.

I had wires connected all over me,

I had a tube for my own colostomy bag,

I had another tube that basically fed me.

It was this huge white IV bag

that gave me all the nutrition I needed.

I had a tube for all my IV fluids

because nothing I drank, stayed down.

Anything I drink came in and came out the colostomy bag.

As a matter of fact,

I would test this by drinking Kool-Aid.

So I would take a red cup of Kool Aid,

even though red isn't a flavor.

It was red Kool-Aid, I would drink it and in 30 seconds,

you'd see red start coming out of my colostomy bag.

Anything I ate I couldn't hide from anybody.

I went to go visit the doctor

to ask them how I was doing.

How I was gonna get out of the situation

'cause at this point in time it was,

this is how my life was going to be forever.

Just medicine and IV bags

and walking around the house in a walker.

That was gonna be the reality of my life.

And I remember being referred to this hospital,

Georgetown University Hospital in Washington DC.

So we took the train down there,

and the doctor gave me a projection

of how long I was gonna live

after taking a series of tests.

They said, "You probably have about five good years."

They told me that there was a chance

for me to get a transplant

an intestinal transplant which is incredibly rare.

You know you hear about heart transplants,

liver transplants and kidney transplants.

Intestinal is weird,

that's a strange and unique transplant.

So they put me on a list

and the only thing I could do is wait.

I waited and I got stronger and stronger

and healthier and healthier

despite what doctors thought might happen.

Of course I was still dying slowly

but my physical strength was coming back.

And I had one false alarm actually.

One day they had called me and they said,

"Hey, we have a transplant for you."

So they put me in his private plane, we flew over,

I got to the hospital, I got to my gown.

They took all these tests and then they walk into the room

and told me, "I'm sorry,

"but this transplant doesn't match you."

Man I flew back to New Haven heartbroken.

And this next time

that I went to the hospital for unrelated reasons.

I actually went because I had pancreatitis.

I had an emergency in my stomach, that's what it was.

I had pancreatitis and I was flown down to DC

actually it was an ambulance drive the second time,

which is a six hour drive by the way

in an ambulance very, very uncomfortable.

Six hour drive and I'm in DC,

I'm talking to Daviya,

trying to get her to fall in love with me.(laughs)

And then comes this doctor who says,

"Listen, we have a transplant for you

"and this one is a match."

It was my chance to get my life back.

Everything that the doctors told me

were unlikely to happen was happening.

My doctor told me that I had a one out of a 100% chance

of surviving the gunshot wound

and all the rest of the infections

and everything that'd survived from the wound.

They said less than 1%

would have been able to survive that.

That's a miracle number.

I woke up from that transplant,

weak but with new hope.

I got that transplant

August Friday the 13th.

It was from a young boy who was 13

from Colorado named Jack.

He was killed in an automobile accident.

And I think I've always felt kind of guilty for that.

Not for his death but

for the fact that an innocent person's death

gave me second chance at life.

And I certainly wasn't innocent.

And this family wrote me afterwards,

they didn't know my name.

The hospital doesn't give out the name,

but they wrote me and they told me how Jack was,

they told me that he was a football player.

He had a great personality, he was popular with everyone.

He was actually a flirt, his mother said,

irresistible to ladies and he had so much life in him.

And she said, now she feels so blessed that his death means

that someone else can continue to live.

And I keep that letter

because for most of my life,

a big chunk of it at least I felt like I deserved to die.

But I can't die now.

I can't give up because I'm continuing this kid's life,

I'm continuing Jack's life.

And even though I don't think it's fair

that somebody like me is still living

and someone like Jack is dead.

I'm gonna use the blessing that he's given me

to carry on as much as possible,

to make as big of a difference as I possibly can.

But I always feel a slight guilt

and not only just for Jack but for...

I see a Facebook post, I see pins,

I see tweets and news articles

about someone else getting killed,

shot almost every week.

And I wonder why these kids die and I didn't.

I'm alive because Jack, an innocent young kid died

and I dealt with,

I guess this is called a survivor's guilt.

But there's so many people who die in the same situation

you are and don't get me wrong, I'm not a soldier,

but when soldiers are on the battlefield

and they're fighting towards something

and they're all on the same level of suffering,

the same risks.

And for some reason, they come back

and so many other people die.

You question whether or not you were the right choice.

Was I the right choice to be alive?

I think even now I'm trying to earn my life still.

Deserve?

Deserve is a loaded word.

I think I'm earning my life now.

I don't think I deserve it, deserve it no.

But I think it can be used

and I think that's how I can earn it.

I think that's how I can honor Jack

because now I can honestly say

that I am starting to love myself finally.

And it's not because anyone else is proud of me.

It's not because anyone else is applauding me.

I heard someone say this to me before.

They said, "I think that the bullet saved your life."

And when said that it made a lot of sense.

Maybe it took this, maybe this was necessary,

maybe this was needed for me to reach this point

for me to be able to effectively impact people.

It pushes me to keep bettering myself,

it pushes me to make my story transparent and open.

'Cause this isn't something that's easy to talk about.

I'm making it my mission to talk about.

I mean, here people ask me to lay out my biggest failures,

my biggest moments of shame and guilt,

my darkest secrets and sins.

But if I know it's gonna help people,

if I know it's worth something

then I'm willing to take that shame

and I'm willing to take that embarrassment.

I'm willing to take that uncomfortable spotlight

and I decided, if I'm gonna change my life mentally,

if I'm gonna change my life spiritually,

then I'm definitely gonna change my life physically.

One of the things they said is,

"He's always gonna be addicted to pain medicine.

"You're always gonna have neuropathy in your right foot.

"It's never gonna go away."

They said that, "All the pain medicine that we give you,

"they might give him brain damage.

"He might have brain damage, he might not return mentally."

All those things were wrong.

I was taking approximately 60 pills a day.

I was taking pain medicines,

I took methadone, Dilaudid.

There's another pain medicine, fentanyl patches.

I had to take tacrolimus or what's known as Prograf,

CellCept, prednisone, pantoprazole, calcitriol.

Some medicine I can't pronounce,

some other medicine it starts with M but it's literally.

I don't know if the doctor gave me this to prank me,

but it's the worst tasting medicine I've ever had.

It looks like yellow paint

and I had to swallow it two times a day.

And it is as bad as swallowing yellow paint.

I used it to paint my name onto a piece of paper

and it said...

See, I have a nine millimeter bullet lodged in my sacrum,

which is pretty much like my spine near my pelvis.

And it's not going anywhere, it's lodged in that spot.

They told me if they remove it, I'm probably gonna die.

So they said, "Let's leave the bullet right there."

Actually, I named the bullet, I forgot about this.

I named the bullet Byron,

because I realized it gonna be there for a long time.

So I named it, fun fact my bullet's name is Byron.

I had rehabilitation nurses

come in and tell me,

"Oh I'm sorry, you're not gonna run anymore,

"you're not gonna build muscle anymore."

I had showed a picture of it to the doctor

of how I used to look.

And I had this great picture,

I had a six pack and everything.

And he said, "Oh, wow, you look great,

"but those days are over."

I remember him saying that,

"Those days are over, give it up."

I went home and I started doing squats on the bed.

Of course, I could only do about five.

No weight, could only do about five.

And I was determined to get back

to where I was supposed to be, to exceed that.

I was determined I was gonna get my life back

in every aspect.

And I had no control over some things,

I couldn't control whose intestines I got

or how well they were going to react to me.

And one of the few things

I was able to control was my body.

I was able to control my muscles,

I was able to exercise as much as my body would allow.

I think the body is the greatest manifestation of progress.

You can take someone who has

no muscle tone, no growth, no potential.

And the same way where you can take someone's life

that has no potential, no talent.

And if everyday you push to get to where you wanna be,

you can get there.

And every day that I'm able to get up,

and I'm able to lift,

it reminds me that no matter where I am in my life,

I can continue to make progress.

I'm in control of how much progress I make.

I don't knock any of the doctors for their estimations.

It looked like five years,

it looked like I wasn't gonna be able to run

or lift weights,

it looked like I wasn't going to have my voice back.

It looked like my mind wasn't gonna be right.

It looked like

I was going to suffer from neuropathy forever.

It looked like it.

But this is one of the times where I'm grateful for

I suppose the Renegade side of me.

The same side that's the most destructive in me

is the side that sees no limitations

and whereas before that was fire and anger,

now it a sees no limitations in faith.

It sees no limitations in miracle.

It rebels even against that.

I won't sprint, I won't be able to run, why not?

What happens if I try to do so?

I won't be able to feel my toes again on my right foot?

Well, let's see about that.

I'm gonna prove you wrong.

I'm gonna fight you on that.

If I'm able to make progress on my body,

I can make progress or anything.

And Renegade knows that rules that were given to him

limitations such as you won't be able to deadlift anymore,

you won't be able to run.

Those rules don't matter,

those limitations don't matter.

And I can rebel against those limitations.

I don't have to live by them.

I can be who I wanna be

and I can get what I wanna get, despite your limitations.

So long as Henry Green is channeling Renegade,

I think it's a good thing.

Ever since I was shot

and I was able to get my life back on track,

I made it a personal mission to go

everywhere I possibly can and share my story

and explain to as many people as possible

that you do have this power and this talent side of you.

And you can use it for something great,

you can use it for something good.

And that's what you should focus on doing.

And I take the ugliest parts of my life,

mainly the parts that I'm the most ashamed of.

And I put it out there, I make it open.

I make it transparent for everyone to see

and I explain my transition from being there

to being where I am now.

I think for myself,

my identity is formed based upon the environment

that I have to adapt to.

Right now, I think that I'm at my most whole

but I've always been categorized in some way or another.

You know that I was Henry Green,

I was Renegade to somebody or Stanley Galbraith.

(laughs)

That name, or Stanley Galbraith

or in DC I'm like the miracle patient

to people I'm different things.

And I think I've come to a place now where I understand

that all of those different characters

that other people see are me

and now I'm not gonna work

to portray myself as one or the other.

I think for the first time ever since the coma,

I've accepted that I'm all one, I'm all these people.

And I'm going to not fight to try to be one or the other

and I'm gonna be all of myself everywhere I am.

From the New Haven, I'm not just gonna be Renegade,

I'm also going to be Henry Green.

I'm probably never gonna be Stanley Galbraith anywhere.

(laughs)

But I am all of these things,

I'm all of these experiences

and it would be foolish of me to try to hide one,

take one away or bring one up and push one down.

It's not sides of me.

A lot of people think it's this side of you

or that side of you.

It's not sides of me,

it's just it's all me.

It's all one person.

(moody blues music)

And I'm finally whole.

My life is all one life.

When someone gets shot,

everyone wants to believe that either they are innocent

or if it's their loved one,

they wanna believe that they're innocent.

And it's because especially

when it's covered by a big news story,

you're able to get a full picture of an individual.

Many times when we get a picture of a victim or criminal,

when you get the picture of the criminal,

the only side that you get,

the only story that you get is their crime.

Their crime and possibly a few negative characteristics

that are meant to explain the crime.

You know what I'm saying for instance,

for the shooter, they say,

"Oh, he was gang affiliated, and he shot him and ran."

And that's all the information

that we get about the shooter.

But for myself, and probably the reason

why so many people feel compassionate towards my situation,

is that they were able to fully understand me afterwards.

They were able to get stories,

stories from my family's, stories from friends

and people who I've worked with,

they were able to get a full picture.

I couldn't just be a criminal,

they couldn't make a two dimensional picture of me

and because of that, now I'm suddenly a victim,

instead of simply a black on black crime casualty,

now I'm a victim, because you can put a face on it,

you can put a personality on it.

And the only thing that's different

that I did with the shooters, I put a personality

and I put a face and I put memories on him.

So now, he's a victim too.

And not everyone will view things this way

because we're all we're all a little biased.

I know that I'm both a saint and sinner,

as is anyone else.

And I think that we have this natural tendency

to paint someone either a saint or a sinner

because then it's easier to hate to love them.

It's easier to do that.

It's harder to look at the complex picture of someone

and see everything that's great about them

and then at the same time,

see their mistakes and see their flaws.

I think Have a unique situation

where I was able to survive a situation

where I would have died.

And I probably would have been labeled

as either a saint or a sinner.

But I was able to survive and then explain my own story.

I was able to paint a gray picture,

instead of a black and white picture, and we're all gray.

The shooter is gray, the victim is gray.

I guess my compassion for the shooter comes from,

I think honesty with myself.

The only reason why you can really, truly hate someone

is if you think you're nothing like them.

If you don't understand them.

But if I'm gonna be honest with myself,

he's very similar to me.

We both were really angry and frustrated

with the situation that we were in.

We both handled our anger

and our frustration in the wrong way.

I'm sure this kid grew up in the same type of environment

that I did, where he realized

that he didn't have the things that he wanted

or the things that he felt as if he should have.

Maybe he's lacking some type of love or pride in himself

that he should naturally have

or that someone should have instilled in him.

So now he's going out,

he's trying to find a way to be proud of himself.

He's going out and he's trying to find a way

to accept himself and to take back the things

that he didn't have.

And I did the same thing

and it will be nothing short of hypocritical

for me to blame this kid

or to to make a monster out of him

when I did the same thing.

And I really wish I could just meet him and tell him that.

I wish I could meet him

and talk to him about everything that he's been through

so that we could find out

how to channel him in the right direction.

I wish he knew he was forgiven.

After a few years,

I've narrowed down my thoughts of who the shooter might be.

And from what I know,

he's in jail right now for something else.

And, you know, looking at where his life

probably is right now,

actually, all the people that I've hurt may have shot me

or are in jail or have died.

Whereas, me five years after the shooting,

I have a full time job

and I'm about to graduate from college.

I'm married with my own apartment,

and I don't really think I'm a loser in this situation.

I would love to shine some light onto him.

If I could, and this is what I want

and I knew this initially,

when I first said, I forgive him.

I know and I knew in my heart

that I was gonna be able to run into him

and have a conversation with him about this.

I want to,

I know that is destiny.

I know that the only way to start changing New Haven

is to take steps like this.

I wanna meet with him

and tell him to his face that I forgive him.

And then I wanna help him get his life on track.

I wanna personally guide him and help him to do that.

I want to get therapy with him.

I'm sure we both need therapy.

Shooting somebody is probably as traumatic as getting shot.

If I could meet him,

I would love to be able to meet with him,

talk with him and share our story together.

I think a shooter and his victim meeting together

to forgive one another is more powerful

than a victim jailing a shooter.

I think it creates more change.

Sounds weird, but I think it definitely does.

The thing about New Haven,

the curse about New Haven and why

the cycle of violence continues to be perpetuated

is there's a nonstop tit for that.

Someone gets shot,

someone over here gets angry,

shoots the person who shot that person.

Someone over here gets angry shoots the person

that shot that person and it never stops

until all family members are dead.

Then their children do it, then their cousins do it

and their friends do it.

The only way stops is if a person forgives.

And I wanna start that.

(moody blues music)

I can see now that without that bullet,

without Byron, the bullet, there's no way

that I would have brought all these worlds into one place.

A bullet saved me man.

Sometimes it's the worst things in life

that bring the greatest and most profound change.

Necessary change.

It's the climax to the plot.

The climax to the plot makes you nervous

and it sounds horrible,

but it's needed for the happy ending.

It's needed.

(moody blues music)

It's hard to see that in the middle of the climax of course

but it's needed.

(moody blues music)

The dude who wakes up with the gangster face

calls me crying in the middle of night.

It's like two o'clock in the morning,

he calls me bawling.

He just keeps repeating the same thing over

and I'm like, "Yo what's good, you okay?"

And he says, "How did you do it?

"How did you do it?

"Henry how did you do it?"

And keeps crying and asking

that same question over and over.

He says, "How did you forgive him?

"How did you change?

"I wanna change, I wanna change like you did."

And out of all the things that I did that was hard for me,

I had to learn how to walk again.

I had to do everything over,

really I had to do everything over,

I wasn't supposed to survive and nothing like that.

How to get my life back.

You know what I'm saying,

I had to try to get a professional life started.

And out of everything that I had to fight and get,

I think that was my greatest accomplishment

because I realized at that point in time,

and I want y'all to remember this

whenever you trying to stay good,

whenever you're trying to

continue to do something positive, people are watching you.

And it's always the ones that are trying to plow you

that are watching you.

The ones that seem like they hating are watching

and they're hoping that you'll continue

being that good person 'cause you know what?

You are their last hope in the world.

You're the last shot of seeing something

actually get out of here, positive.

And in that moment, when I realized

that I cracked that heart that had all this callous

and this pain on it.

When I realized I had broke that open,

I think that was the greatest accomplishment

I could have ever gotten, I could have ever received.

Because I realized that at that point in time,

the way I live my life makes a difference,

an actual a difference on other people.

You know, I know a lot of people say,

"Oh, you're making a difference."

But I was able to see it

and that reminded me every day

that I have to live my life like the people are watching me

because they are.

And I think that was my greatest accomplishment.

That's it, thank you.

(crowd claps)