Transforming Terrance
Transforming Terrance
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Terrance Williams-Bey didn't always carry a gun. But after local competitors in the drug trade robbed him of the large wads of cash he enjoyed carrying, it was time to get serious. Terrance also had another problem—a man was stealing his girl's affections. On April 7,1995, Terrance tucked a nickel-plated .380 handgun in his jacket. About that night Terrance remembers, "I wasn't going to move, he wasn't going to move . . . I was thinking, I'm not going to lose."
The 19-year-old high school dropout from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, shot and killed the man. After five days on the run, he discovered his guilt and shame had overcome his fear of the law. He turned himself in, and he later pled to a 25-year sentence.
Terrance's choices leading to his crime validate what the prophet Jeremiah wrote: "The heart of man is desperately wicked, who can know it?" He lived in a good, clean neighborhood. His mother had raised Terrance in the church. He sang in the choir, attended Vacation Bible School, and served as an usher. Fatherless, he still had positive adult men trying to show him how to behave including his football coach and a mentor, Dr. Kevin James, who listened to Terrance's adolescent problems. But it wasn't enough. As he puts it, "There were people who were trying to help me and save me. I wouldn't allow them to do so and would not take the help they were offering. I just didn't take heed."
After getting kicked off the football team for his consistent rebellion against the coach's authority, he took to selling and using drugs. He did well enough for himself to surpass his first teacher in the business and enjoyed carrying large wads of cash as a symbol of his success, but it didn't resolve anything in Terrance's heart: "I still didn't have direction. I was a wandering drug seller."
As the teenager began his long prison sentence, a few things became very clear. There was a chance that when released, he'd still have time left to live on the outside. If that happened, he wanted to do better. He quickly earned his GED and would later take a second look at the faith of his mother.
