Imagine being nine years old and learning that someone wanted to kill you, your dad, your brothers and your mom.

That's what I found out

when I was nine years old.

It all began on a perfect summer day.

It was the end of summer, August.

It was hot, sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and we spent all day at the

beach. And everything was ideal until that night when everything changed.

My uncle was a police officer and he worked the midnight shift.

My dad left for work just like normal.

He hadn't gone probably half a mile from our house when a car pulled up behind him, pulled out alongside him,

and he was shot through the driver's side window of his car

with a shotgun.

The shotgun blast tore through his face,

then ripped off his lower jaw.

Before he lost consciousness, he wrote not an accident.

He realized that they were trying to kill him,

and he feared for his family's life.

On that summer night, my childhood ended.

I was never alone again.

We were guarded 24 hours a day.

Everybody had a gun.

We were fenced in.

...