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Trevell “G-Dep”Coleman is still at peace with his decision to confess to shooting a man nearly 20 years ago. Even in the beginning stages of his 15 years to life prison sentence, the New York native is content with the way things turned out.

In a new interview with New York magazine, Coleman explained that the prison time was the bookend to what had been a long internal battle. “I was happy,” he said of receiving the sentence. “It sounds crazy to say you were happy about getting a fifteen-to-life-sentence, but I was. It just seemed to me like the end of a nightmare…I was living in 1993 for seventeen years.”

The night which led to the prison time occurred on Oct. 18, 1993. With a newly purchased .40-caliber handgun, the then 18-year-old ran up on a man at around 1 a.m. Jumping on his bike in pursuit of the victim, Coleman pulled out his gun to rob Job Henkel. “Where the money at?” he asked, but got no responce. A struggle ensued and as Henkel tried to grab the firearm the former Bad Boy rapper fired off three shots, hopped back on his bike, and fled the scene.

Over the next several years he kept the secret to himself, becoming addicted to PCP, which was spearheaded by the death of his grandmother, and the loss of his Bad Boy deal. Arrested 17 times between 2003 and 2007, Coleman got married and had two children before confessing to the crime. He told his wife—Crystal Sutton—, his mother, mother in-law, and a friend, about the shooting, but even after a stint in rehab, he couldn’t  go public. “A lot of people were really cleansing their souls, and really getting to the root of their problems,” he said. “I was not. I would just be embellishing, telling stories about getting high. I wasn’t being totally honest.”

Coleman struggled with his sobriety, was arrested more than once near the very location where he had shot Henkel, and would purposely do drugs in a building overlooking the scene. “Maybe that was my way of confronting that demon. Or maybe I was just becoming that demon. Or that demon was consuming me. That’s how crazy I was getting.”

He confessed in late 2010, unaware that Henkel had died. An autopsy report revealed that Henkel’s death was brought on by three gunshot wounds to the abdomen, chest, and back.

Unbeknownst to Coleman, committing the robbery would’ve only given him $6, which was all that was in Henkel’s wallet.

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Photo: New York Magazine