Acting as lookout outside a fellow teen gang member’s house in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, Xavier McElrath-Bey, then 13, felt his heart begin to race.
Xavier saw a suspected member of a rival gang, named Pedro Martinez, approaching — and Xavier, as he was expected to do, sounded the alarm. His friends came out of the house and out onto the street.
“I never thought I’d be involved in taking someone’s life,” Xavier tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I just thought that there’s no way that God will forgive me.”
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Within days, police arrested him for the murder. By that point Xavier had 19 arrests and seven convictions, ranging from robbery to assault and battery. Raised with an abusive father and then an abusive stepfather, and briefly in foster care, Xavier “felt safer on the streets,” says his sister, Melinda, 45.
Xavier McElrath-Bey.Nolis Anderson
He describes himself as “a scared kid who experienced violence from every adult in my life,” adding, “My gang partners gave me a sense of belonging. I would have done anything to retain their respect. They were people I looked up to, and also feared.”
For more on Xavier McElrath-Bey’s journey to forgiveness and redemption,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
The judge who sentenced him in adult court to serve 25 years in prison issued a damning pronouncement: “You are never going to change,” he said. But the words were a wake-up call to Xavier, then 14.
“There was something deeply damaged inside of me,” he says. “And if I didn’t face that, I would never be able to heal.”
Cinthya Alonso, left, with Xavier McElrath-Bey, right, and a portrait of her brother, Pedro Martinez, who was murdered at age 14.Nolis Anderson
In prison he earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and learned how social isolation and peer pressure fed his self-destructive acts. Released at 26 after serving 13 years as a model inmate, he became a youth mentor to those like himself – and then a passionate advocate for juvenile sentencing reform. Now 46, he co-directs the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, an organization that lobbies states to end laws that lock up teens for life without parole.
“It just proves that we can all be much, much better,” says Cinthya Alonson, Pedro’s youngest sister. “He is a beautiful inspiration to many, including myself.”
Says Xavier, who invokes Pedro’s name as a vital part of his transformation: “I try to be a living example of positive change. I like to think Pedro’s memory is being honored.”
source: people.com
