David Arredondo | Prisoner Stories

Inside The Walls | Prisoner Stories

Texas

"Untitled" ©
By David Arredondo
I came into prison at the young age of 19 years old. I spent my young life locked up. What led to me being where I am right now was my own hard head aswell as growing up in a tough neighborhood. I grew up in El Paso, Texas where there are alot of drugs and gangs. Seeing my friends use and sell drugs was very normal there. Seeing addicts shooting up heroin in alleys and ditches was no big surprise. I joined a street gang because gangs were the cool thing back then. Smoking pot and snorting coke was cool. Stealing cars, carrying guns and tagging on walls is what I did at the age of 13. As I got older my crimes became worse. My enemies became more dangerous and that's when the murders started.
What started off as gangs being cool with after school fist fights became terror as we got older. Gangs no longer were about fists and rocks, gangs became about pistols and drive by shootings. Alot of young teens were getting killed over the territory and some sent to prison if they were lucky enough to survive it. I ended up in prison for shooting another teen, who was in a rival gang, in the back of the neck. The bullet severed his spinal cord and took his tongue and teeth as the bullet exited from his mouth. He remained a quadriplegic and lives in a nursing home till this day. I didn't mean to hit him, all I wanted to do was scare him into thinking twice of messing around with me and my gang of friends. It had never occurred to me that I'd be spending so many years in prison. Now I am 30 years old. The street gang I was in no longer exists because its members are either dead or here in prison with me. Gang violence in El Paso has slowed down now because everyone is in prison now. Prison was not easy either. There was a gang problem in here too and very dangerous when I walked in here. I realized I wasn't as big and bad as I once though as a teen, in here were guys with life sentences for murders 10 times worse than mine. There were guys who had nothing to lose and the way of fighting in here is the shank. Seeing guys getting ice picked was regular in here. Seeing guys beating weaker prisoners was regular too. No guns in here to be big and bad. It's all about size and strength and if your not 6'2 and up with good boxing experience then you will have guys test you out on a regular basis. After so many "tests" you lose teeth and the face gets all deformed. Picture boxing without gloves to protect the face from injury. That's prison.
I started off fighting and going out of my way in being the respected tough guy. It worked for the first 3 times, but I came face to face with a bigger and stronger and more hateful man. He broke my shoulder and no matter how hard I fought I stood no chance with his power. That's when I started packing a shank. A shank is what guy's use to fight when dealing with bigger prisoners or in my case I was out numbered by my enemies. I ended up stabbing another prisoner after he broke into my locker and stole my property. I sent him to the hospital with 4 stab wounds and in turn I was indicted and charged with Aggravated Assault w/deadly weapon enhanced to a 1st degree felony. I was facing 15 years to life in prison, but was blessed that the prosecutor gave me the plea bargain of 4 more years stacked on top of my 10 year sentence. So here you find me still in prison doing my 2nd sentence for a crime I committed while in prison. I am in segregation now because of the crime I committed and will spend the next 2½ years in this small uncomfortable cell. I have had family member pass away while I'm in here and I could not go to their funerals. I have lost my you years I could of used to buy a home and car. Instead I have nothing. All the young girls I would "show-off" to as a teen with my gang membership have graduated from collage and are now holding high paying jobs such as lawyers and dentists. Now that I am older and remember the look in the eyes of those young girls, I realize they saw me as a real sucker. I thought it was respect in my young dumb mind, but it was really disgust and pity. S I tell all young guy's who think it's cool to "show-of" in front of girls be being the biggest, baddest in the neighborhood, those teens like me who thought being tough was about fighting and ditching school and disobeying my parents, look how cool I am now. Not a penny to my name. Not one of those girls even writes me because they are to busy making good money and enjoying life out there with the few smart men who were too bright as kids too follow my footsteps.