My name is Ian Bick, and you're tuned in to Locked in with Ian Bick.

On today's episode, I'll be interviewing Khalil Ryan, who at 22 years old, was sentenced to five years in a federal prison relating to gun charges after the FBI conducted an investigation.

Join me, Ian Bick, as I interview people from all over the country, from inmates to officers and white-collar criminals to violent offenders. Hear these crazy stories from all sides of the criminal mine. Khalil, thanks for coming out today. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Really excited to have you. Your story is just super interesting. Like, I read about it, and I went down like this rabbit hole,

and I was just like, wow, this is crazy.

We got to get them out here.

For sure. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you for giving me the platform.

I like to start at the beginning.

I think it's super important to hear someone's story from the beginning

to figure out why the things happened that they did.

So start me off from the beginning. How did you grow up?

What was your childhood like? What's your family like? So I grew up in a Middle Eastern

household. My family's from Palestine. They came over here. They started a life. I went to high

schools predominantly, mostly Arab, Muslims, a charter school. After, I was always kind of, I guess,

kind of a class clown, quiet kid type of person. After I graduated, though, that's where

really things kind of took a downward spiral. I started getting, I got addicted to drugs,

mental health problems, identity issues. And when I say identity issues is, even though I am

Arab, I lived in America, I kind of felt like the split identity, like who am I, when am I,

am I Arab, am I American? Even though if I stepped out of the bounds of where I live at, I can see

that there are different people other than from the language I speak of who I am. So it really kind of

affected me as an individual. So coupled with am. So it really kind of affected me as the individual.

So coupled with all these factors, it kind of got me sucked in to trying to find out who I am.

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