‘The Rifle Didn’t Shoot’

Jonathan Torres has faced demons and survived an attempt on his life, and the former gang leader is determined to serve Christ with whatever time he has left.

It took looking down the barrel of a rifle for Jonathan Torres to finally pay attention. After years of drugs, alcohol, violence, and lengthy prison sentences, he began to seek God.

Torres grew up in Yauco in southern Puerto Rico, the son of an attorney and a secretary who tried to raise him with morals. But the apartment building he called home was overrun with drugs and criminal activity. He was smoking pot by age 10, using cocaine at 11, and shooting heroin into his veins two years later.

To fuel his drug habits, Torres engaged in burglaries and robberies. In 1999, he ended up in juvenile prison for the first time at age 14.

“The juvenile prisons in Puerto Rico are really tough,” Torres recalls. “You had to fight for your food. You had to fight for everything. The only way to make it was to fight and be tough. I started making a name for myself. I was the gang leader by age 15.”

When he was released, Torres returned to his old ways and was sent back to juvenile prison, where he was stabbed in a gang leadership struggle and nearly died.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the Lord saving me,” he says. “I came back to prison and took a year to recover.”

Torres got released again and his grandmother, Ines, suggested that he move to the mainland in 2004 to be near his father, Willy, in Jersey City, N.J. She was worried that her grandson would be killed or spend his life in prison if he stayed on the island.

“When I got here to the United States, the story didn’t change,” Torres says. “I started using drugs again. I started doing robberies in the streets and all that. When I got locked up for four years here, since I was a gang leader, my name was already known so I spent most of my time in solitary.”

The first miracle

After serving his sentence, Torres was released to the streets again in 2009, but he had little support and fell back on the only thing he knew.

“I hit rock bottom,” he says. “I was eating out of garbage cans. I was like a bum in the streets. My drug habit took over and I was homeless for years. I was hungry and living in abandoned houses.”

Found guilty of a home invasion, Torres was sent back to prison for six years and did most of his time in solitary again. He vowed to change his ways when he got out, but in 2015 he moved to York, Pa., and was soon back to dealing drugs. Rival drug dealers started following him and even tried to kidnap his family.

“I’m 39 years old and I’ve spent more than half of my life in prison. It’s time for me to live for Christ now.”

One night he was going to the store when a car pulled up next to him. Someone pulled out a rifle and pointed it at his face at point-blank range.

“When they pulled the trigger, the rifle didn’t shoot,” Torres says. “I realized something was watching over me. I knew this was no human thing. These people weren’t there to make a scene. They weren’t the kind of people to act like they were going to kill somebody and not do it. When I saw that, I started walking a different way.”

Soon Torres got a visit from a woman who used to buy cocaine from him, but this time she had something else in mind. The woman had surrendered her life to Christ and kicked her drug habit. She was talking to Torres’ wife, Elizabeth, but at one point she asked him, “Aren’t you tired of suffering your whole life?”

“I asked, ‘Why are you doing this? You don’t know me.’ She said, ‘I don’t know you, but Jesus does.’ I started crying and I felt different. I told God, ‘I don’t care if I have to go to prison to pay for everything I did wrong in my life, but I don’t want nothing evil in my life no more.’ I felt like a big pressure came off me.”

Jonathan Torres is part of the men’s ministry in York, Pa., and active in street outreach.

A second miracle

His wife used to beg Torres to go to church, but he’d always refused and considered the Bible “scary.” At last, on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, Torres entered The Salvation Army’s Spanish Temple Corps in York, Pa.

“When I walked through the door, I was crying like a little baby,” he says. “I never felt like that before. I got on my knees, and I told the Lord, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you saving me because I am the dirtiest person in the world? I don’t deserve for you to do this to me.’ I heard His audible voice say, ‘Don’t say that, my son.’ They had an altar call and I went to the front. I fell to the ground, and I had an amazing experience with the Lord.”

Torres gave his gold chains, an earring, cigarettes, and money to Major Miguel Robinson, then the corps officer in York, as a sign of his new life before Robinson prayed over him. Two nights later, the major and his wife, Major Francisca Robinson, went to the Torres home for prayer. Torres believes demons were cast out of him that night, as he fell to the floor and had un­explained scratches on his back.

“It was something supernatural,” Torres says. “I felt delivered.”

Thinking back to the episode today, Robinson remembers Torres falling out of his chair to the floor and making noises during the prayer. No one touched Torres, but he later lifted up his T-shirt to reveal the scratches. To this day, Robinson can’t explain it. “That was something amazing,” says Robinson, now the corps officer at the Army’s Philadelphia Tabernacle. “It was the first time I saw something like that. There was no explanation because there was no way for him to get hurt on the floor. There were scratches on his back. I saw it.”

Not just doing time

Now a new creation in Christ, Torres was still arrested three days later on old charges. He served close to three years in prison, but things were different.

“I didn’t feel like I was locked up,” he says. “I felt like I was on a missionary trip inside the prison, preaching the Word. I ministered and served as a pastor to 42 inmates.”

He’d been sentenced to seven years but got out in less than half that. One of the parole officials quoted 2 Corinthians 5:17 to Torres at his hearing, and he was released to a halfway house, where he started a program to help ex-addicts.

Today, Torres is part of the men’s ministry at The Salvation Army in York, where all four of his children found Christ. He’s taking the GED as part of the process to become a Salvation Army officer in the future. He owns his own tree service company but is willing to give it up to serve God.

“I’m 39 years old and I’ve spent more than half of my life in prison,” Torres says. “It’s time for me to live for Christ now.”

Lieutenant Pedro Molina, the current corps officer in York, who’s served in ministry with Torres for the last four years, calls it a “journey of growing and maturing” for the former gang leader. He believes Torres would make a great Salvation Army officer, given his background.

“That’s what makes a good officer,” Molina says. “He has been there. When you know where you’re coming from, you can speak of what you know. When you’ve had a transforming experience, you can share that and speak to that with people. He knows how to meet people right where they are.”

Hope in Jesus

Every Tuesday night, Torres goes out with The Salvation Army canteen into the streets of York to minister to people who were once just like him.

“Hope is the first thing we have to establish,” Torres says. “When I was in their position, I didn’t think there was hope. When you live this kind of lifestyle, you don’t think there is a God. You say, ‘This is not fair. Is this my life?’ The first thing we need to do is let them know there absolutely is hope and the hope is in Jesus. They have to know they are valuable to Jesus.

“When they see that, things are totally different. The only way that’s going to happen is through the Holy Spirit interceding in the moment and touching their heart. That can be an awakening.

“We see people who are restored to life, we see people going to rehab, we see people accepting Jesus, and we see families coming together.”

photos by Michael Paras