By Jordan Smith
Aaron Kinzel grew up poor in Toledo, Ohio, and from an early
age, he was pulled into a life of crime. He didn’t know his father, and
his mother’s partners encouraged him to break into houses, sell drugs,
and engage in various forms of violence. “I just grew up around a lot of
bullshit,” he says. “I was really groomed to be a professional
criminal.”
He was a teenager on probation in 1997 when he left the Midwest on an
ill-fated road trip to Maine with his girlfriend. He was carrying drugs
and a loaded gun when he was pulled over by a state trooper. With the
officer standing outside his car window, Kinzel panicked. He pulled his
weapon and fired at the officer, who fired a return shot into the air as
he dropped to the ground. That prompted the trooper’s partner to
unload: He fired 15 rounds from a 9 mm Beretta into Kinzel’s car.
Amazingly, no one was injured — not even the state trooper. Kinzel’s
shot had missed him completely. “It was miraculous,” he recalls.
After a high-speed chase and a night on the lam, Kinzel and his
girlfriend were apprehended. Kinzel was charged with the attempted
murder of a police officer and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
Behind bars, his life changed. He earned a GED while awaiting trial,
and once in prison, that made him eligible to take college-level
classes. He was encouraged to do so not only by the teachers working
inside his Maine correctional institution, but also by the lifers he met
there. “They were scholars,” he recalls. “They have just been reading
for decades and had changed their lives.” They told Kinzel to eschew a
life of violence and pursue an education. While still incarcerated, he
scraped up enough money to take one for-credit college course. He was
hooked. Once he was released, at age 28, Kinzel kept going. He got
bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is currently working on a doctorate
at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, where he also teaches classes
in criminal justice. “I think about the dumb shit I did as a kid and
think, God, night and day as compared to how I am now.”
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Source: The Intercept_
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