Corey Winfield was 10 when he saw someone get shot for the first time. He and a friend were marching around with a drum in the Park Heights section of Northwest Baltimore, and a few older guys asked if they could use it; while they were doing so, someone came up and shot one of them in the back, paralyzing him. At 11, Corey found his first gun, in an alley near his school. He sold it to a friend’s older brother for $45 and used the money to buy lots of penny candy. At 13, he saw someone get killed for the first time — a friend, who was 14 — and that year he started selling drugs. After he was robbed a few times, he bought another gun. When he was 17, he was buying some drugs to sell when the dealers tried to rob him, so he shot one of them, killing him.

Story by Alec MacGillis for ProPublica