After shooting nearly killed him, Detroit man dedicates life to helping other young people avoid that fate

DETROIT (FOX 2) - After a Detroit man nearly lost his life to the streets, he has dedicated his time to help keep other young people off that same path.

"It's so funny because someone told me a long time ago that what happens to you is not for you, it’s for you to reach back and help somebody get through what you’ve gone through," Terrance Pope said.

That old adage would prove true in ways Pope could have never imagined. Born in Detroit and raised in the Third Street neighborhood on the west side, young Pope was drawn to the street life that was all around him.

"We started on this block 12-13-year-old kids running up and down the block," he said. "Hazelwood and Third hanging with the dope boys: selling drugs, to stealing cars, to b and e’s –breaking and entering."

It was full throttle from there—with Pope and his friends formalizing their allegiance to the neighborhood with ink.

"I got this tattoo when I was 15 years old," he said. "We talked about it growing up, you know, ‘we the Third Street boys,’ under the OGs, but this kind of officialized it."

All of that fast living came to a screeching halt at just 21 years old during a stop at this liquor store on Woodward and Kenilworth.

"I walked into the store high off ecstasy and pills, I had just lost my mom four months ago, I was going through a lot mentally, I was depressed, stressed out and I was angry most importantly," Pope said.

His investment in a decades-old beef between crews from Third Steet and the northend neighborhood paid him in blood.

"I don’t know why it happened, I don’t know why we were beefing. It was just something we adopted growing up," he said."I walked into the store, I was going to let off some steam and when I seen him, I wanted to let off some steam and when I walked into the store I saw that it was a perfect opportunity."

Pope spotted a rival from the northend and forcefully bumped into him.

"He threw his hands up as if, as a act of surrender. Me still trying to be the bully and not letting my pride go and pursuing it, I walked out the store and when I came out of the store I opened the door and the guys were standing right here," Pope said. "I’m thinking in my mind we’re going to fight. But that’s not what they had in mind...he said these exact words, ‘Surprise,’ and pulled out a gun."

He was shot three times in the leg and four times in the back.

"I remember opening my eyes and just seeing the lights as they were pushing me to the back," Pope said.

I was in a coma for almost seven days.

Pope woke up on his mother’s birthday and knew immediately something was horribly wrong.

"The first thing, the second thing that I thought was I can’t feel my legs. Will I be able to walk again?" he said.

At least one of the four rounds that struck his back hit his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down.

"There was many a night in the hospital where I thought, ‘I’m going to end it.’ I was trying to give myself that courage to kill myself, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go through with it," Pope said.

But in the weeks that followed Pope would find something to live for and it started with a visit from a local pastor.

"I told him, ’Listen sir, I respect you, but I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in the whole white Jesus thing,'" he said."He told me one thing that stuck with me forever, he said, ‘Sometimes God will put you on your back, so you can look up.’"

Pope did-converting to Christianity, linking up with the Urban Men’s Ministry Bomb Squad, before launching Transitionz 7 L3C--- where he mentors teens and young men to get them off of the path that led him to death’s doorstep.

"The idea was not having anybody coming up: my father was in prison since I was 9 years old. He went to prison for 11 years. My older brother was in and out of prison and I knew that I was suffering," Pope said. "My idea was to say, ‘I want to be that mentor that I never had.’ I want to be that person that speaks life into people in the times of their dark places that nobody did for me"

And as a result, some are seeing the light.

"One in particular is a guy named Pernell. He was in the streets, he had a drinking habit, he hung out with his homeboys he was doing things he shouldn’t be doing," he said."And he ended up connecting back with me because he was like I need something, I want to change, I want to be different I just don’t know where to start. So I began to work with him he began to come to my group, he’s like my second man now. And I mean, he’s growing. He’s grown like crazy. He’s becoming a man. I’ve seen him, I talked to him the other day and I told him you’re becoming the man that you knew that you could be."

And that makes two of them. Pope was a young dad when he was running the streets in Detroit. Now he’s raising his teenage son, alongside his wife Ayanna.

"I’m not going to say that I never thought I could have a wife or be a dad, I just never thought that I could be the dad and husband that I am today," he said.

Pope is sharing his turnaround story in a self-published book, "Sitting Down is the Tallest I Ever Stood."

"From mob, that’s short for mobster, gangster. The mog is a man of god," he said. "When I was able-bodied, when I was on my feet there were things I wouldn’t dare do. I wouldn’t dare go to the gym, I wouldn’t dare go to school, sit down and read a book, educate myself. I wouldn’t dare reach back and pull young men from the streets. And so the things I’m doing now in a wheelchair I wouldn’t dare do when I was on my feet"

His message to the young men engrossed in the street life he left behind: "The dream that the streets feed us- that’s all it is. It’s a dream. It’s a false reality. It’s not real. They don’t tell you about the parents who are crying at the funeral. They don’t tell you about the kids that are out here with no dad because the dad has made a bad decision. I would say that you have a purpose. I would say that you are loved. That you don’t have to choose this lifestyle."