A former gang member’s video blogs have gone viral, notching up almost 6,000 hits over the weekend.

Warning gang afflicted young men that their options have shrunk to death or jail, Calvin Minors told The Royal Gazette he had created the three videos in an attempt to “reach out to them, get them talking, educate them in terms of awareness of life and the way of the world”.

“It’s not for me; my message was just to plant a seed. When I went through my own transitions, I didn’t change overnight. I was still selling drugs. But I started reading,” he said.

Mr Minors plans to keep issuing weekly video blogs, with one planned for Friday that “might be controversial”, he said.

“The main problem is a lack of leadership, especially the absence of fathers. You have some young boys who have fathers but the relationship isn’t structure. It’s not built on communication and trust.”

Communication is a prominent theme in one blog, entitled “A message to the community”, in which Mr Minors warns that the latest violence shows that “communities are suffering, predominantly the black community” — and that if the trend continues unchecked, “it’s only a matter of time before the whole of Bermuda is waste, or all the black boys are locked up”.

He added, in a five-minute address that he made at home with his GoPro camera and tripod: “We’ve got to stop this — we’re dying.”

Mr Minors created the videos after reaching a point where “I couldn’t take it any more”.

Calling on Bermudians to “speak, use your words, talk”, he repeatedly said: “As a black male, I’m killing myself.”

As the Island adopted gang culture from the United States, he added, it would only lead to worse violence, including major drive-by shootings.

Asked yesterday if he believed the Island’s violence was worsening, Mr Minors replied: “It doesn’t have to get worse. I always keep hope alive. I hope that it doesn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

He continued: “We knew these things were going to happen. We’re replicating cultural trends from the US. If this keeps up, it’s only a matter of time before we do get serious drive-bys and, Lord forbid, someone’s small child gets hit.”

Most of the responses to the videos have been positive, he said, although some feedback has not.

“I don’t mind; I was forged in the fire,” he said. “I’m built for that.”

Blogging under the name “Sportin Sam”, Mr Minors said he paid homage to his St David’s grandfather, Reginald Minors, who earned the nickname in part through his clothes style, called “sporty” in Bermudian slang.

“It’s almost like an alter ego for me,” he said. “My actual nickname is Mo.”

As well as initiating dialogue, Mr Minors hopes to pass on “advice on how to educate yourself”, particularly through information available online.

Now 28, Mr Minors said that he had managed to rise above the self-destructive gang culture largely through simple luck.

“When I joined a gang, I used to hang around Rangers,” he said, referring to the Southampton Rangers Sports Club.

“We called ourselves thing like Southside, Quality Street — they offered some type of structure, some respect. It feels good to be around people who’ve experienced the same as you. Nine out of ten of us didn’t have fathers. We’d take shots at each other over it, joke about it, to help ourselves heal.”

Part of his salvation came from his grandmother, Jean Richards, who “just did not play”, he said. “I had that structure, that discipline from her.”

Mr Minors counts himself lucky to have been taken under the wing of boxing coach Allan “Forty” Rego and his wife Joanne, saying he had been “adopted by two amazing individuals” early in his teens.

Young men deprived of role models are “lashing out to make themselves feel better”, he said.

“I have a diverse group of friends. A lot of them know where they come from. They have a lot of history and culture.

“With black people, a lot of us don’t have that. We can guess that our roots are somewhere in West Africa, from slavery. Being as we don’t know who we are, we can create a new culture and fix these problems.”

In the meantime, he warned, gang-fuelled violence and the indiscriminate use of guns will spread across the Island if unaddressed.

“I used to go visit Paterson, New Jersey,” he said. “You’d see the police outside Paterson — they knew that Paterson was the s**t of New Jersey; they were keeping it there, so it wouldn’t run out into the good neighbourhoods.

“But in Bermuda, it’s not possible to contain it. It’s too small here. It’s time for everyone to start looking at this as their issue.”