Gangster Marvin Hebert pardons debtor who shot him in the genitals
A former British gangster has told why he decided to forgive a debtor who shot him in the genitals.
Marvin Hebert got involved with the underworld in his youth. He was put on trial dozens of times, the first time it happened when he was only 13 years old. By the end of his criminal career, he had spent 12 years behind bars and was a suspect in connection with 76 felonies.
Hebert claims that nothing scared him at the time. “I didn’t care who you were, what size you were, or how many of you there were,” he says. – Anyone who knows me will attest that I’ve gone up against five people alone, against 20, 30 … even hundreds, at soccer games.” But his love of risk let him down one day.
It happened when Hebert set up a meeting with another gangster who owed him money. He knew the man would come armed, but he was counting on a knife or a bat. Instead, the debtor pulled out a gun and shot him in the leg. Despite being wounded, Hebert did not want to give up. The debtor then shot him in the arm. Hebert continued to bully the offender. The third shot hit him in the genitals and the fourth shot took away his eye. After that, the bandit fled.
The bleeding Herbert was rescued by a passerby he knew from a local gym. When the gangster woke up only in the hospital, he could think of nothing but revenge. He imagined what he would do when he caught the gangster who had maimed him. “I thought I’d cut off his hands first, then his feet, and blind him – see how he liked that,” Hebert recalls.
He was distracted from these thoughts by a call from the principal of the private school where he had enrolled his daughters. The principal wanted to know if his students were going to get involved in a crime spree. It made Herbert wonder what would become of his children.
“I remembered that when I was first picked up for murders in 2022, my son was seven. And after that, he refused to talk to me, he was afraid of me. He was like, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, you’re a murderer.” It broke my heart. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to my two daughters.”
– Marvin Herbert is an ex-gangster
According to Herbert, that’s when he realized revenge wouldn’t do any good. “I thought, you can’t do anything about this creep. To hell with him, I’d better take care of my daughters,” he says. He managed to put crime behind him. Hebert is now known as a motivational speaker and activist fighting for prison reform.
