i don t know if he read the book. did you say good-bye to your brother? yeah, i kind of teared up. i hate that he s leaving. i used to sit in here every day and get the paper and we would go straight to the local section and you ll find in briefs, shootings in oakland. and i always read to see if i see my brother s name there. i don t know what i would do. that would devastate me. i d probably lose my mind. while i was on the road, working out in grand rapids, i was in bed one night at the hotel and my phone started going off. and i woke up and i grabbed my phone and i had gotten a text message from a deputy in oakland telling me the news that ezekial had been murdered. i immediately grabbed my computer and started searching for news articles online and, unfortunately, i was able to pull one up that confirmed that it was, indeed, true.
thighs, my back, my ass. i ve been shot a few times. but, i mean, it s the cost of doing business. i was struck by ezekial s loathing of drugs and drug addiction. i mean, drugs seem to surround him in many ways. i mean, i think it caused a deprivation in his childhood. his brother, who he adored, had a drug addiction, and that really bothered ezekial. my daddy ain t raise no deep dope fiends. why all of a sudden you want to start using drugs? you going to let somebody else convince you to pay them your money, take out of your children s mouth, so you can poison yourself? that s just stupidity. that s beyond stupid. ezekial can t stand me. if you see somebody sitting there, cutting on theirselves, basically, cutting theirselves and cutting their throat, and you keep stopping them, but he keeps trying to cut himself,
interacting with an inmate, it will be over something i can find in common with them. usually sports or you know, joking around, just about anything. my new favorite inmate. what s up, man, i m paunch. nice to meet you. a lot of times books. i ll notice what an inmate s reading. if it interests me, i ll talk to them about that. paunch developed a bond with ezekial taylor while filming at the alameda county jail. we were interviewing ezekial and he was kind of an easy dude to joke around with. we kind of got along good right away. i m a professional at this now. i know, you make it easy. and as i spoke with him more, i found out what he likes to read. i ve read a lot of books about, like, the rwandan holocaust over there in africa. i m just real interested in history and in genocide. i mean, like, why would hitler want to do that?
to ezekial. and when i learned that, in fact, it was over an argument, over something insignificant like a card game, i was even more devastated. it just seemed like such a horrible mistake and a true tragedy. he was so empowered by becoming a father. his whole motivation for changing was because he was going to have a child. that this just, just, just seemed like such a tremendous loss and a tremendous waste. it s been fun, but i gotta run. right? give you guys a mic. i need to get a parting shot of you leaving. all right. no problem with that. this is the kind of bull [ bleep ] that happens, you know? you know, i can t really understand it, because it s not an environment that i ever grew up in, but, yeah.
talking to him. and he basically was just the person that gabriel described him to be. what s up, bro! ezekial was back in jail due to a probation violation on his original conviction for burglary. he was assigned to the same protective custody unit as gabriel, because he, too, had recently sworn off gang life. we tell each other every day, if i walk by here, point at me and do a little heart to me. i m like, my girlfriend. we ve been together my whole lives. we can probably count on one hand how many things i don t know about him. that s my brother. we grow up together, through the foster system and group homes, both our parents are deceased. it came to a point where if he couldn t stay at the group home i was in or foster home i was in, we would meet each other in the same spot. we will sleep in a stolen car together or, excuse my french, i won t tell it on camera, but we would be sleeping, and he would give me some food and every night, we would make sure it was