I heard shots and hid… I could have been killed. One of the rival gang died that night…
THE moment the gunshots went off, Jermaine Pennant made a decision which would affect the rest of his life.
While many of his older friends raced off after a rival gang, Jermaine jumped behind a takeaway counter and hid, “nicking chicken wings”.
So when a rival gang member was later kicked to death, the future Arsenal and Liverpool football star did not stand trial like others.
This turf warfare took place when Jermaine was 14 and a group from his notorious Meadows Estate gang in Nottingham were ambushed outside KFC by a gang from St Ann’s.
In his autobiography Mental, exclusively serialised in the Mirror this week, he writes: “They had knives, baseball bats and some guns.
“As they ran past, they stabbed one and hit another with a baseball bat, and a few shots went off. They all ran off. Our gang chased them.
“I didn’t see it, but one of the St Ann’s gang got caught, they turned on him and he later died in hospital.” Jermaine, now 35, says: “It was scary but, growing up where I did, it was not the first time I heard gunshots. I automatically jumped for my life.
“I was lucky. If I had been stood outside, it could easily have been me who was stabbed.
“It didn’t matter that I played football and wasn’t interested in that gang culture. If I was hanging around with my friends, I was a target. I still am.”
He adds: “It all happened so fast. There was a fight, the other gang ran off, and some of our gang chased them. I was left hiding behind the counter, nicking chicken wings.”
Two days later, police knocked on his door. He was hauled down the station and interrogated.
Jermaine says: “Being questioned by the police was even more scary than hearing gunshots. I knew if I got charged with murder I could be going to prison for a long time.
“But I could only tell the police what I knew, which wasn’t much.” Six youths from the Meadows stood trial for murder but were acquitted as, Jermaine claims, there was insufficient evidence to prove who delivered the fatal beating.
Scarcely a year later, he became the most expensive teenage footballer. Jermaine was just 15 when Arsenal paid Notts County £2million for him in 1999. He scored a hat-trick on his full league debut, against Southampton, but his achievements on the pitch were overshadowed by his problems off it.
In 2005 he was jailed for 30 days for drink-driving while disqualified after crashing his friend’s car into a lamppost. On his release, he became the first Premier League star to play wearing an electronic ankle tag.
Jermaine still attracts controversy and has signed up for the next series of Celebrity Big Brother – to try to prove he is “not a bad guy”, he says.
There were dents in the side of the car, they weren’t trying to stop us to chat JERMAINE RECALLS A GANG TRYING TO FORCE HIM OFF ROAD
Yet his turbulent, deprived upbringing, revealed in his book, is more shocking than the antics which earned him a bad-boy reputation as a footballer.
His childhood home in the Meadows is a far cry from the large family home in the Shropshire countryside he now shares with glamour-model wife Alice Goodwin.
His parents Debbie and drug-dealer Gary split when he was three. Jermaine says he had no contact with his mum for the next decade, until forced to track her down to sign his passport application so he could go to Paris with England Schoolboys.
At one point, a relative told him she had died of throat cancer. Even now a quick Wikipedia search says his mum is dead, but Jermaine reveals he discovered she is still alive.
He met up with her, but their relationship soon fizzled out again.
Jermaine says: “I was sad when I was told she had died, but I didn’t break down in tears like any normal person would. I never had that bond with her. I just felt numb.
“When I found out she was still alive, it was a relief, but I didn’t really know how to feel.”
Dad Gary eventually became a drug addict and spent time in jail.
As a boy, Jermaine slept on mattresses on the floor of a bedroom without carpets and curtains.
Surrounded by crime, he had his first run-in with the law at 12 when he was arrested for stealing a CD from HMV. But he tried to stay out of trouble to pursue his dream of becoming a footballer.
“I was never going to be an engineer, the only thing at school I was good at was sport,” says Jermaine. “I only had one route out of the Meadows, kicking a football.
“God knows what would have happened to me if I had stayed there.”
But the KFC incident was not his only close call as a teenager in Nottingham. On one night out during his Arsenal career, he was a passenger in a friend’s car when two vehicles tried to force them off the road.
He says: “It was like being trapped in a game of Grand Theft Auto. My friend was swerving left and right as the car behind was bumping into us.
“The two girls in the car with us were screaming. There were dents in the side of the car and the back bumper. In the end, we managed to trick them by turning right into oncoming traffic at a junction. There was no other way out.
“As soon as we crossed the bridge into the Meadows we could see the two cars had stopped. They knew they couldn’t follow us there. It was the luckiest escape of my life. They clearly weren’t trying to stop us to chat.”
One pal, Benjamin Smith, was not so lucky when he was attacked a few months later. The gang stabbed him 15 times and carved ST – for St Ann’s – into his cheek. Ben spent weeks in a coma. His mum asked Jermaine to visit in the hope it would wake him.
The star says: “My friends were dead proud of me, making it from the Meadows to the Premier League, so his mum thought it might help if he heard my voice. I didn’t dare tell Arsenal where I was going.
“It was horrible seeing him like that. I didn’t know what to say, I just told him what I’d been up to. I wasn’t there when he woke up, I was just glad he did. He was so badly injured, he has to take tablets for the rest of his life.”
Jermaine adds: “People say I didn’t fulfil my potential as a player. Maybe they are right, but given where I came from, I think I did pretty well.”
The number 16 tattoo on his left shin is a reminder of that. It recalls the shirt he wore during his man-of-thematch performance for Liverpool in the Champions League Final in Athens in 2007, and during Stoke’s FA Cup final appearance four years later.
Both times he was on the losing team. He missed a Premier League winner’s medal in 2003/4, despite being on Arsenal’s Invincibles team, as he did not play enough matches.
And though tipped to make his England debut when with Liverpool, from 2006 to 2009, he was overlooked.
Jermaine, with Billericay Town last season, says: “My off-the-field antics probably halted me playing for England, but I didn’t have anyone to guide me. I had to make mistakes and learn those lessons. I have no regrets. I’m lucky to have been on that journey and I’ve enjoyed it.”
Mental by Jermaine Pennant is out on Thursday, August 9, in hardback ( John Blake).