Evaristo Salas Jr. (Junior)

And then the guns and all that came later when I started, you know, towards the, when I turned 14 and 15, that's when things got really serious.

And I started getting shot at and chased and then jumped and almost stabbed almost every day.

That's when it became, you know, that's when it started solidifying and becoming a robot.

I've seen, well, I've seen, the first time I've actually seen one was when one was being pointed at me when I was, I think I was, I think I was 13.

We were crossing a bridge, you know, and the small little bridge is over a canal.

And these guys pulled up and they were from a rival gang and they pointed it at us.

I kind of jumped out of the way.

The other guy's like, oh, it's fake or something.

They threw a rock at the car or something like that.

They didn't end up shooting at us or anything, but they pointed at us.

And then a couple other times, you know, a few years, you know, maybe a year later, a couple months later, someone drove by, shot a couple times in the air, things like that.

And then you would see maybe one or two persons, you know, they would have like, you know, a rifle or something, or maybe a .22 here and there, those small little guns or whatever they would come.

It was slowly, that kind of slowly was starting to filter into our gang too, you know.

And because things started getting more violent.

And back then, there were still like, there was only like two streets in my neighborhood.

And sometimes it was a real small town.

But if I left those two streets, I was going to get jumped or get in a fight.

And I remember one of the schools I went to was in a kind of a rival neighborhood of one of the gangs.

And I literally would get chased over there.

And then they would wait for me after school and try to jump me.