Former co-defendant and founding member of the Young Slime Life (YSL) organization, Trontavious Stephens, testified at the trial of rapper Jeffery Williams, aka Young Thug, on Wednesday, Jan. 3. After clips of his Stephens’ testimony surfaced online, fans expressed their concern about the failure of the education system, noting how he struggled with basic math during his courtroom appearance.
According to 11 Alive News, Williams is allegedly a co-founder of Young Slime Life (YSL) and is being tried in connection with the criminal street gang allegedly responsible for at least 50 murders in the Atlanta area. Williams was arrested in May of 2022 on RICO charges.
Stephens, who also goes by the street names “Tick” and “Slug”, testified that Williams co-founded YSL along with himself and another co-defendant, Walter Murphy, who also has taken a plea deal in the case. However, he denied that YSL was a criminal organization and testified that it is only a record label that evolved from the gang ROC Crew. “YSL is a music label. Music happened first. That was the approach Music.”
During his testimony, Stephens was asked what year he joined ROC — short for “Raised on Cleveland,” after the Cleveland Avenue district of Atlanta that was home to the crew members — and he replied that he joined when he was in the sixth grade. However, the question was regarding the year that he joined the gang, and after several attempts to help Stephens answer the question, he stated that he had trouble passing his GED because of the math portion. “I’m trying to count. I’m kind of bad with math.”
He continued to struggle for several minutes before the prosecutor eventually asked him how old he was in 2010.
“Don’t do the math,” said the prosecutor. “What year were you born?” Stephens replied, “1993.” The prosecutor patiently walked through the math to determine that Stephens must have been 20 in 2013, to which he agreed. “2003, is 10 [years old]. 2013 is 20 [years old],” explained the prosecutor. “Now back up three years from 13, that puts us at 2010, which makes you about 17.”
“You’re going too fast,” replied Stephens, visibly confused.
The video of Stephens struggling to answer questions about his age has been viewed more than 10 million times on X, and several users thought that Stephens was trolling the prosecutor. However, many others aren’t convinced he’s trolling and are blaming the school system for failing him.
“Take it from a teacher. He is not trolling,” noted one X user.
“I ain’t going lie I thought he was trolling too, until the going too fast part. Look at the way his body language changed. Bro definitely got confused,” wrote another.
“This isn’t fun it’s sad,” said someone else. “When parents aren’t keeping up with their children someone will, it’s not usually anyone good. His face shows he was trying to gather his thoughts.”
One user replied, “If math stressed him out that bad, what do you think life did to him?” After another noted that Stephens had “no choice but to join a gang,” another replied, “I mean…yea. That’s what the system wanted, like when yall gon actually sit back and see that all yall do is laugh at people failed by the system and the people around them.”
“Congratulations you figured out how the system works,” echoed another.
Stephens took a plea deal in 2022 in exchange for his testimony. He received a 10-year sentence, with two years credit for time served and eight years on probation.
