Azim Khamisa & Plez Felix

The bare facts of the story are these: Azim Khamisa’s 20-year-old son, Tariq, was making a delivery for a San Diego pizza parlor when he was shot and killed in a failed robbery attempt by a gang. The killer was Ples Felix’s 14-year-old grandson and ward, Tony Hicks, who was sentenced as an adult for the murder and is now imprisoned.

That could have been the end of the story. But it was only the beginning, as you might guess from the photo above. That’s Khamisa on the left, Felix on the right.

Khamisa, a banker whose family had fled violence in East Africa years earlier, was devastated by his son’s death, yet he reached out to the killer’s family, realizing that they too had lost a boy.

Felix, a former Green Beret who is a program manager for San Diego County, was devastated by what his grandson had done—on the first night he had ever defied his grandfather and left the house to meet with the gang. Felix went alone to a gathering of the grieving Khamisa family, telling them of his own grief over what his grandson had done.

Khamisa established a foundation in his son’s memory; and he and Felix formed an alliance that transforms their losses into a resolve to see that other families do not suffer such tragedies.

“There were victims on both ends of the gun,” says Khamisa. “Ples and I have become like brothers.”

Today Khamisa and Felix go again and again into schools—together—to talk to students about Tariq’s death and about gangs, to help the kids talk about the awful effects of violence on their own lives, and to affirm that they will avoid violence themselves. Kids hearing the two men’s story and seeing them working together also get an unforgettable picture of a response to violence that is not more violence and hatred.

Commenting on their work in schools, Khamisa says, “Every time you talk one youngster out of committing homicide, you save two.”

Both Felix and Khamisa are speaking out for “restorative justice,” a way of dealing with criminals that helps lawbreakers understand what they have done and make restitution to those they have harmed, rather than just sending them to prisons. “The way we deal now with lawbreakers does nothing for those they have injured, for reforming the criminal or for repairing society,” says Ples Felix. Further information on their work can be found at http://www.tkf.org