“I thought he was going to run up, stand over me,” Weedy said. “I thought it was over.”

His son was then only about six months old and it pained him, he said, to think the boy would grow up without a father. But the shooter never rushed up for the kill.

After that, Weedy started thinking differently, he said. He resolved to reconcile with his father. He would recommit to leading his son in a better direction. And he told his friends not to seek revenge.

“I’m covered in the blood of Jesus,” he told them.

But leaving gang life is not simple. For one, just because you say you’re out of the gang doesn’t mean your rivals see it that way.

On that afternoon, while his friends marched over to see if the man in the red hoodie was a threat, Weedy hung back. His allies would learn that the young man was, indeed, a rival’s relative. But he was not doing anything threatening, so they let it go.

Weedy leaned on a black iron gate, looking on from afar.

“Even if it was an opp, he can go to the store,” Weedy said, using the slang term for a rival. “We go to their store. What’s the problem? You got to play fair.”

He has not fully extricated himself from gang life, and may never do so. But here he was, no stranger himself to gunplay, questioning not just the scene playing out before him, but his own life.

It was a delicate dance, Weedy said. Approach an opp aggressively and he might shoot you. Or you’re the one with the gun. “He talk crazy, you shoot him,” he said.

“You go to jail, you get killed. It’s either/or. For what?”