A Latino gang member will spend much of his adulthood in prison, after essentially being raised in the gang culture, which led to his involvement in a brutal stabbing

Weld District Court Judge Thomas Quammen sentenced Alexander Ramirez, 20, to 40 years in prison for attempting to kill a 17-year-old boy in a gruesome gang stabbing. "How a human being can do this to another human being defies all sense of civility and humanity," Quammen told Ramirez. The boy suffered stab wounds to his heart, liver and lungs, and was essentially gutted on the street with his intestines hanging outside of his body. Ramirez was found guilty at trial of attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, first-degree assault, conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, and engaging in a riot, for the attack on the kid in the afternoon on July 3, 2011. Ramirez and a car full of gang members approached the boy near the intersection of Bearwood Avenue and East 25th Street Road, where a fight ensued and the boy was stabbed. Ramirez was abandoned by his mother, and his father spent his childhood in and out of jail. Ramirez was raised by his grandmother from when he was 8 until her death. Ramirez turned to the gang to fill that void. He often had to live with friends or his stepmother because his mother chose her boyfriends over him.