When people ask me about my deployment to Afghanistan, I usually tell them that it wasn't that bad. Not because I made it back to the United States unscathed, but because I was already used to the violence taking place around me. I grew up in a city called Goldsboro, which is located in North Carolina. I stayed in a section of the city that is referred to as "Webbtown." It is not as big as Houston or Dallas, but the things you would see growing up in the inner city would blow your mind.
As a 13-year-old, I used to hang with my friends outside until about 9 o'clock p.m. during the week. On the weekends, my mother would let me hang out until about 10 o'clock pm. One day, we were sitting on my mother's porch. We were talking and laughing. It was about 7 o'clock pm when we noticed the same car driving up and down the street. I asked my friends if they knew who the car belonged to. All of my friends had a look of confusion on their faces. So we continued talking, but instead of sitting down, we were now standing up in case we had to run inside of my mother's house. The car rode passed again and then slowed down when it passed my mother's house. My friends and I go inside of my mother's house. .
All of us gather around the window to see what was going to happen. It pulled up next to a car parked on the side of the road. The passenger side window came down, and gunshots began to fire into the parked car. The gun wasn't a regular pistol. Those gunshots sounded like a machine gun. The suspicious car pulls off and makes a sharp right turn on Slocumb Street. After about 5 minutes, my friends and I run outside to look at the car. To our surprise, we see two people sitting inside of the vehicle. The guy on the passenger side had bullets holes from his chest to his head. The guy sitting on the driver side had bullets from his neck to his head. His head was hanging off of his neck. I quickly ran back into my mother's house and told her.