What Made The Real Life Omar Little, Donnie Andrews, Become A Stick Up Kid?

13 years ago view-show 3,874,365

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If you aren’t familiar with Omar from The Wire you should not be coming to iHipHop in the first place.  Vice Mag did a really dope interview with the guy who Omar Little was based on, Donnie Andrews.  I thought this excerpt on what made Donnie become a stick up kid was particularly official tissue.

Can you trace your history back to an event that sent you down that path?
I know exactly when it was. I was nine. I had an abusive mother, and one night she woke us up, me and my brother Kent, like, two in the morning and made us go to the Laundromat to go wash clothes, so we got up. They used to have an old homeless guy or a wino to watch the Laundromat so no one would break no machines, and when me and my brother were putting our clothes in the dryer, three guys came in and they asked the guy that was watching the machines for fifteen cents to catch the bus. And the guy got indignant, cussed them all, “Fifteen cents? I got fifteen cents and a handful of change but I wouldn’t give you the sweat off my balls. You faggot motherf*ckers, I’ll give you fifteen cents to get out of my face.” Next thing you know the change went up in the air and they beat him literally to death. So me and my brother, we standing back there – my concern is my little brother. The back door is locked, it’s got a padlock on it so we can’t go out that way but we want to get up out of there but we can’t without passing them. So we had to sit there, stand there and wait until they finished beating on this guy. They looked up and seen us there, me and my brother, and they start walking toward us. I push my brother behind me, and they said, “Loan me fifteen cents.” I said, “I ain’t got no money, this is my mother’s money,” and back in the day people respected, they don’t mess with mamas so they knew I couldn’t give them no money. Then they said “But if you had ten cents you’d give it to me, right?” and I said “Sure.” So they left, then me and my brother, we left the clothes but we climbed over the washing machines because the guy’s laying in the middle of the floor in a pool of blood. I mean, a POOL of blood. We got to the door and I got my brother out then all of a sudden the guy let out a big fart and took his last breath. I stopped and looked at him, and right by his head was a dime and a nickel. I made up my mind that I would never be a victim, I would never be the prey, I’d be the hunter. If you going to be mean you gotta be the baddest motherf*cker on the street.