PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – Xavien Howard’s first brush with murder happened when he was around 13, he says.

On a rainy afternoon in Houston, Xavien was hooping alone in the street in front of his house when two figures in the not-too-far distance appeared. One he’d seen before; the other he did not know.

As the man he’d seen before walked toward the corner store, the second man opened fire, killing him on the railroad tracks just a few yards away from Xavien.

The killer started running away when he noticed Xavien, who was unsure what to do, looking on.

“Go in the house, they shooting,” the man said before darting away, leaving Xavien stunned.

Neighbors started pouring outside to find out what happened, with many moving closer to the body. Xavien, however, did not move an inch.

Eventually, Xavien’s mother Luckcher Howard came out of the house and shook him out of his trance.

“Mom,” he said, “I saw a dude shoot a guy on the train tracks.”

Both were terrified. The shooter saw Xavien, and he also knew where he lived. They both knew his life might be in danger if the shooter thought Xavien told the police. So Luckcher sent Xavien 20 minutes away to live with his grandmother for the next two months, just to be safe, until the police found the killer.

Xavien returned home, but he wasn’t the same. He says he was “traumatized,” but in retrospect, Luckcher says it helped him.

“It grew him up, let him know what he wanted to do in life,” Luckcher told Yahoo Sports. “He wanted to hang around positive people.”

He wanted to get out of the Fifth Ward.

View photos Xavien Howard (L) grew up in Houston’s Fifth Ward with six siblings. (Special to Yahoo Sports) More

The origins of Xavien Howard

Located about five minutes northeast of downtown Houston, the Fifth Ward is a place where even a trip to the store down the street can be an adventure. This is where Xavien Howard, who now spends his Sundays as one of the NFL’s elite cornerbacks for the Miami Dolphins, grew up.

Day after day, Howard trekked through the streets to get some chips and juice, passing drug dealers every time. He was always on high alert, careful to never hang around too long, lest he get caught up in a turf war.

“Hearing gunshots, seeing people get shot, that was just normal to me,” Howard says.

Luckcher did her best to keep Xavien and his six siblings out of trouble. As a single mom, she worked a variety of jobs to keep the lights on, food on the table and clean clothes on their backs. But bad influences remained, and some of Xavien’s friends ended up succumbing to the fast money that drug dealing provided.

“You see a guy with all the J’s [Air Jordans] on, you wanna do that so you [can] look better and boost your confidence,” Howard says. “I had friends like that, that were out there dealing drugs trying to provide for [themselves].”

Xavien’s best defense was sports. He was the second-oldest, and his big sister Ashley — who was one year older — set the tone. She starred in multiple sports, which he also did, and she and Xavien always competed hard against each other, especially when it came to pickup basketball, where she used to bully him in the post until he finally outgrew her.

“That’s where his love of sports came from,” Luckcher says.

While some members of his family were drawn to life in the Fifth Ward, where crime and drugs are rampant, the backdrop of negativity served as a constant reminder for Xavien of what not to be.

“He’s seen a lot out here,” Luckcher Howard says.

“I didn’t want to see that, man,” Xavien explains now, shaking his head not too far removed from that nearly 12-year old memory of a man being shot dead right before his eyes. “I saw him fall to the ground. That was enough for me.”

A life’s course is set

Howard kicked his desire to make it out of the Fifth Ward into overdrive. While Ashley and his other siblings would get into scuffles here and there with other kids, Xavien never seemed to get into any real trouble. His mother saw him as an obedient kid, one who willingly went to church, prayed regularly and always seemed to act like he had a higher purpose.

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