Home. The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household. When you have a home you are supposed to be able to stay there every night with your family knowing you are safe and peaceful. This is the definition of a home, but what if when you are home this is not what's going on at your home? 
In many neighborhoods in the U.S cities have became I the “Hood” or “Streets” where gangs come in and take over the whole neighborhood. They take away the part where you can be safe in your house cause you never know if or when some “gang”(s) do a “drive by” and shoot up your whole house.
This is my life. I am Jamal Lewis.  I am 37.  I have a wife, Aaliyah, and two twin boys who are 16, named Marquis and Malik. We just moved here to Chicago because I got a promotion at my work they moved me to corporate. We moved to this neighborhood that I could find that was closest to the school and my work.

September 15-

First day of school:
How was your first day, Malik?
“Oh it was alright, different but alright.”
”How about you Marquis?”
“Well dad there was a fight at school today!, apparently it was ‘gang related’, dad!”
what do you mean gang related?
“I mean there was a fight at school today at school and it had to do with gangs”
oh, what actually happened do you know.  
Malik jumped in and said “apparently some ‘Bloods’ found a ‘GD’ stealing some stuff out of one of their houses” 
Well my first day of work was alright i mean it wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst, the first day is usually always the hardest, I don't really like the environment there but i'll get used to it, it's really different but maybe in a better way.
September 25:
Dads wakes everyone up and is really happy now at breakfast we jumps right up and says, “now a week in chicago is starting to feel like home.”
Malik doesn't look to happy but Marquis says “yup and I have made a couple of friends too, how bout you Malik?”
“what, oh ya?! I've made a couple friends, not much though”
“off to school and work you guys go” mom says.
So we are at school and I see the ‘bloods’ go up to malik so I kinda peak around the corner so they don't notice that I'm watching them and I see them take Mallik to this room that's vacant kinda looked like a computer room?
Then all the sudden they gave malik these papers in a folder. I ask him what they were when we got home but he said it was just his homework he forgot in class.
September 30:
I notice malik wanted red shoes last night when dad took us to get some new shoes. But i thought it was just a color but after that this morning malik was wearing red socks, his red shoes, and a red shirt & sweater
  now I think he is part of the “bloods”
I don't think this is gonna be good.
So I kinda figured he had to do with some sort of thing with the gangs now cause he always wore some sort of red like everyday now but i didn't want mom and dad to know so I didn't say something. Until he asked to spend the night at a friends house and i knew he was going to do something bad with his so called friends that were in the gang too. I was scared for him I didn't want him to get in trouble or die. The next day at school he had a black eye and bruises up and down his body,  “dude what happened.” malik responded with an anger “nothing don't worry about it!” “dang dude are you alright” I asked “but seriously what happened are you good bro” “bro i said don't worry about it ok that means don't worry about it” malik shouted with great anger in his voice.
“Alright but i'm sure mom and dad are gonna wanna know” now malik is very irritated and he dragged me into the room I saw him in with his friends the other day and he told me about the gang stuff i was very upset when he told me and I told him that he needed to get out of this because it's going to end up really bad and something will happen, “I don't want anything to happen to you” I said. 
October 7-
Yesterday there was a driveby a couple blocks down from my house  this morning I asked malik if he knew anything about it but he told me no. Later that day there were cops at the school and they were talking to the kids in the gangs and I just thought they were because that's the most probably thing but then I saw the cops put the kids in handcuffs and take them to their car then all the sudden I saw the cop take malik and i didn't know what to do i didn't know if I should tell mom and dad or no, but when I got home I saw mom and dad on the phone and at that moment I knew they were already talking to the jail and that the driveby was him and if the cops didn't kill him mom and dad would he was in so much trouble he would be lucky if they would let him step out on the porch but.
When he got out of jail a couple days later he walked home from the jail, he was walking home and the people who he did the driveby on pulled up in there trans-am firebird, they got out and just started whaling him with punches and kicks they brought out bats and started beating him up with a bat. Mom and dad couldn't understand why he wasn't home by now he should of been home by now but he wasn't so they decided to drive down to see if they could see him, down the road about half a mile they saw something on the sidewalk so they went to go look and sure enough it was malik unfortunately.
They ran right out of there seats of the car after they got close enough and the first thing they did was make sure he was still alive but he couldn't move he was breathing but he wasn't conscience so dad threw him over his shoulder and threw him in the car mom sat in the back with him to make sure he was still breathing and dad sped his way to the hospital then gave me a call to tell me what happend. I went to his room and sure enough i found one of his “friends” numbers I gave them a call and told them after that but I personally went after them and I had more in mind then what they did to my brother on my way to try and find the gang I see this car and I knew it was them I didn't come with any weapons or anything because I thought we were going to fight it out. The car come up and about 40 yards from me they slow down I see a guy come out of the window and sit on the door with a gun, then they started firing the gun. That's the last thing I remember. No matter how hard I tried I will still be a statistic.