He seemed like any other kid. Only 17 years old. Slim. A little cocky.

Let's say average. What was different, though, was that he had killed two people.

I met him in a juvenile detention center in the South. And he agreed to talk to me on camera with the condition that he wasn't identified. So we'll call him Julian.

He was charged with murder and was awaiting arraignment. But since he was a minor he wouldn't go directly to jail.

The first thing about him that really surprised me was his ingenuousness.

He didn't even pretend to cover up his crime. On the contrary, he seemed to be proud of it and described it to me in detail.

Julian is a member of the Primera Street Gang in Los Angeles. And he told me his gang had sent him to Miami to kill an enemy gang member.

And so he did just that.

He traveled by land, found the "enemy" at a party in South Florida, got three feet away from him and killed him.

"We looked around for him, he was at a party, I saw him and right there I blew out his brains," he said, unwaveringly. With an AK-47 rifle, he added, "Do you remember his face before he died?"

"Of course. Nice looking," he answered.

"Nice looking? Are you telling me that it's nice seeing the expression of someone who is about to die?"

"In his case, yes."

"Do you feel good about killing him?"

"Yes," he answered, without the least remorse.

For this alleged murder, Julian could spend a big part of his life in prison. However, this is not the first person he has dispatched. He told me that five months previously he had killed another member of the Latin Kings, this time with a knife in the back at school. For him, the hatred he feels
for members of that gang is a fact of life.

"Who are your enemies?" I asked him.

"The Latin Kings."

"Why are they your enemies?"

"They belong to another gang," he answered.

"Killing each other is the only way to solve problems?"

"It is the only way of not seeing them anymore," he replied. "And they are going down, one by one."

I was struck by Julian's dark eyes. It was as if they weren't seeing outwardly, as though they were connected to an inner world inaccessible for the rest of us. When he spoke about his murders he did so in the same way other kids talk about their football games or their girl friends.

That is, as though it weren't anything out of the ordinary.
The thing is that for Julian, killing is nothing unusual. He states that he has done it before. His friends in the gang have, too. His enemies in the street have done the same.
In spite of his young age, Julian already has a son, a year old.

"Would you want your son to be like you?"

"No," he answered, softening his tone for the first time in the interview.

"In what way would you want him to be different from you?"

"I want him to be something in life. Something better than me. Not to be someone like me, in prison my whole life."

Julian is very proud of being a member of the Primera gang. "Primera Sangre" ("First Blood"), he repeated several times during the interview.

But in a rare moment of reflection, when I asked him if he would want his son to be a member of his gang, he thought for a few seconds and then said: "No."