PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. –
Xavien Howard’s first brush with murder happened when he was 13, he says.
On a rainy afternoon in Houston, Xavien was hooping alone in the street in front of his house when two figures in the not-too-far distance appeared. One he’d seen before; the other he did not know.
As the man he’d seen before walked toward the corner store, the second man opened fire, killing him on the railroad tracks just a few yards away from Xavien.
The killer started running away when he noticed Xavien, who was unsure what to do, looking on.
“Go in the house, they shooting,” the man said before darting away, leaving Xavien stunned.
Neighbors started pouring outside to find out what happened, with many moving closer to the body. Xavien, however, did not move an inch.
Eventually, Xavien’s mother Luckcher Howard came out of the house and shook him out of his trance.
“Mom,” he said, “I saw a dude shoot a guy on the train tracks.”
Both were terrified. The shooter saw Xavien, and he also knew where he lived. They both knew his life might be in danger if the shooter thought Xavien told the police. So Luckcher sent Xavien 20 minutes away to live with his grandmother for the next two months, just to be safe, until the police found the killer.
Xavien returned home, but he wasn’t the same. He says he was “traumatized,” but in retrospect, Luckcher says it helped him.
“It grew him up, let him know what he wanted to do in life,” Luckcher told Yahoo Sports. “He wanted to hang around positive people.”
He wanted to get out of the Fifth Ward.
