Thanks for listening to you Had Me at Black.

I'm Martina Abrahams.

In 1992, the blood and crypt gangs of Los Angeles

declared a truce after over two decades of rivalry.

This peace agreement became known as the truce of nine deuce.

When he was five years old,

Damon and his family were victims of a shooting that became a catalyst for the truce.

Here's what happened.

I want you to breathe all this in.

And I got... This is you had me at Black. The podcast were Black millennials tell true life stories.

So this is 1992. This is after the riots right around the time of the

truce and I do. I'm living in the middle of Los Angeles at this time.

I had an understanding, you know, there's certain things we just couldn't do,

certain times that we just couldn't play outside.

And being five years old, even at that time, you knew what was going on. We lived at a house and

our next door neighbor had been shot. I remember being at my grandmother's house and

no one to duck when you heard gunshots, you know, at five, even younger than that.

So it was so prevalent at the time.

I think that was the reason why I knew what had happened more so than the typical five-year-old.

We had spent the whole day with my grandparents and my mom was coming to pick us up,

to take us home.

My grandfather needed to go to the corner store and get some cigarettes.

...