K.G. Wilson had reached his breaking point.
After eight years of canvassing the streets, calling out drug dealers and regularly attending candlelight vigils to demand an end to violence, the former gangbanger turned peacemaker decided to call it quits last month. Wilson said he wasn't getting the support he needed from community figures, elected officials and church leaders. It was also getting expensive. Sometimes he had trouble paying for the gas he needed to drive to vigils, he said.
"It just was hard," Wilson said, in a phone interview Wednesday night. "It was just really hard on me."
So he published a post on his Facebook wall saying that he had retired. Wilson said he even considered moving back to Chicago where he's from.
But it wasn't long before Wilson began to doubt his decision.
Last Saturday, when 26-year-old Adelaida Sadd was found shot to death in a duplex in north Minneapolis, Wilson didn't go out to the scene like he normally would.
"I couldn't sleep at all that night because I knew I was supposed to be there… I just believe that that's my job to be there man," Wilson said.
The next couple days, after speaking to supporters which included the mothers of slain victims who he had helped console in the past and seeing a news report about his retirement, Wilson decided to return to his post.
