Editor’s note: Cornelius Johnson was among the speakers who shared stories and straight talk with teens at a Feb. 10 event at Drury University called “Ripping the Roof Off of Youth Violence.”
Part of an occasional series on teen gun violence in Springfield. Read the series introduction: Alarm over youth gun violence in Springfield spurs task force and a look at root causes
At age 20, Cornelius Johnson began serving prison time after he shot a man in Cape Girardeau.
“Lack of money. It’s all about money,” Johnson says. “Broken homes don’t have that, and anything they do have is barely enough. The kids they see out there, they got this, and it makes them want it by all means necessary. I was a kid once. Same thing.
“You see family and stuff together, you see the love, you see the connection. You see the unity… Most of the homes now, you know, they’re broken. Fathers are in prison and that’s because they were trying to make a hustle to support their family. Now they can’t support their family.
“My lifestyle was like that,” says Johnson, who served nine years in prison. “It’s like they always say, ‘You the man of the house.’ Got a girl. She was pregnant with my child. I just lost my job. Drug money wasn’t going right. Bills due. So the next thing to do is get the money the best way you know how.”
Get a gun.
“And then you strike, not thinking about the consequences afterwards… Now your life is gone, and their life is gone.
“I went to somebody’s house trying to rob them, but they didn’t have nothing. In the midst of it they got shot — I shot him. At that point in my life I felt I had no other choice. I was in his house, he had his hand on the same gun and I was like, ‘If I let go of the gun he’s going to kill me. So I had to pull the trigger, and when I pulled the trigger I shot him.”
The victim survived — “Thank God for that” — and Johnson went to prison.
Today at 41, married with a good job, Johnson takes his message to teens as an outreach minister with community activist and Pastor Roger Franklin from Heart Church.
At the Feb. 10 teen event, he gave an emotional testimony.
“Sometimes our parents weren’t taught love, but we wanted that love,” Johnson began. “We’d seen that love, always expected that love. But you know sometimes that love only comes from God. When you’re all alone, when you’re ready to commit suicide — I tried to commit suicide four times. I tried to take myself out. But just by the grace of God, He seen something different and He put me around people who actually expressed his love. So even though I didn’t have any in my home, and even though I didn’t have the money to go to a counselor, God always sent good people with knowledge, with wisdom.”
“The whole thing is not giving up on a kid,” Johnson said. “A lot of people, what they do is give up on kids. They aren’t heard. They ain’t loved and so they act out. They gotta be heard. They gotta have some attention. That’s what anybody and everybody wants. Just to be heard. Just hear me. Just hear me.”
related story: series introduction
Alarm over youth gun violence in Springfield spurs task force and a look at root causes
Gun violence among teens in Springfield is on everyone’s radar. A new task force has begun work, while “credible messengers” are going to the streets, earning the trust of at-risk teens — on their turf and on their terms.
