My name is Johnzell Moorehead, and I’m from the south side of St. Louis, which is like a baby LA……Sometimes you need guns just to protect yourself.
My mom was shot by a former boyfriend and paralyzed when I was 7 years old. She and my brother began having problems, so I started staying with my dad more. But when I was 12, my dad died, and I ended up back with my mom. She couldn’t handle all three of us kids though. My dad’s side of the family was not really in a position to take anybody and I don’t think I would have gone to them anyway because they would never have made sure that I stayed away from trouble. My brother got lucky and my mom’s side took him in. I felt so lost and believed nobody really cared. I started staying away from the house for nights at a time. I’d go to school from a friend’s house. So, I was placed in DFS (Division of Family Service). From then until I was 17, I was in foster homes. Still, except for an expunged marijuana charge, I didn’t get in trouble.
All that changed one day in 2017, when I was 27. I was riding in a car at 1 a.m. An off-duty police officer was out looking for his younger brother, to whom he had loaned his car (the young man was out looking for drugs and hadn’t returned home in days). The officer was chasing cars randomly, at high speeds, in a high-crime neighborhood. He didn’t use a police siren, lights or any other signal that he was an officer. I was scared for my life: It was a rough neighborhood and there was a strange person chasing me. The officer shot at me from his truck window, and I shot back. (I didn’t have a gun, but my passenger did.) It was never my intent to harm anyone, much less an officer of the law.
The female witness who reported the incident stated that the officer shot first, but that didn’t change anything. I was sentenced to 25 years – higher than the guideline range. Why? The prosecutor justified it based on my old expunged marijuana charge.
I am now 35 years old. I have four beautiful children who are waiting for me to be a physical presence in their lives instead of a phone dad. Since I began serving my time, I have earned my GED, completed many other classes and am waiting to take an HVAC college course. But the length of my sentence puts me last on the list. There’s not much to do in prison other than work out, read and take as many classes as you can. But I also work as a barber to stay focused.
My oldest daughter is 16, my second oldest is 13 and I have a set of twins who are 11. I love my babies, and without them I might have crashed a long time ago. They keep me going, and I make sure that I keep them going. If you were to talk to any of my kids, they would tell you that it feels like I’m there with them, because I stay on their butts about school, respect and anything else I feel I need to be on them for. We have a strong and wonderful relationship; nothing matters in this world more than them.
Still, I haven’t been able to touch them since I’ve been gone. And at the end of the day, there is only so much I can do from here. So, I’m trying to do whatever I can to get back to them.
