BEFORE THE 90 DAYS Brian Muniz was a drug dealer; carjacker sent by his ex-wife?

90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days star Brian Muñiz shared the harrowing story of how he became a paraplegic during the premiere episode of Season 7. However, there is A LOT he left out during his initial telling!

“When I was 27, I was shot with a small-calibre handgun. Hit me in the spinal chord. It left me a quadriplegic,” Brian said in his intro clip.

Brian then shared details about the shooting:

There was two guys waiting for me as I come home. One guy across the street comes to my car, tells me to ‘Get out, I got a gun.’

I was being carjacked, but being a young guy from the inner city, that didn’t scare me much.

I thought, ‘Maybe I can grab him and get away from the situation.’

But, uh, I got shot and it was, um…instant paralysis from the chest down.

Towards the end of the episode, Brian expressed his concerns about how things are going to go when he meets his Brazilian girlfriend, Ingrid, for the first time.

There’s still much Ingrid has to learn about how I live with my disability. I’m worried about whether or not she’ll accept me for who I am.

And on top of that, Ingrid doesn’t even know the whole story of how I ended up in a wheelchair in the first place. My carjacking was not some random event. There’s a lot more to the story.

Brian Muñiz podcast interview

Three years before making his 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days debut, Brian Muñiz was a guest on the Charlie Smith Speaks podcast. In the 80-minute interview (included at the bottom of this article), Brian talks about his entire life — including lots of information about the carjacking and why it wasn’t a random event.

Brian reveals that his dad left for Vietnam soon after marrying his mother. After his dad returned, Brian says he became an alcoholic who not only cheated on his mother, but moved his girlfriend into the family’s home.

Brian’s dad was into boxing and had a gym where he trained aspiring boxers — including Brian and his two brothers.

“In my neighborhood there was only gangs and drugs and low income housing,” Brian explains. “So, that was my inspiration in life, Charlie. That was my inspiration — either I wanted to be a boxer, ball player, or I wanted to be a drug dealer.”

Helping motivate Brian towards a life of crime was a familial connection to organized crime.

“My grandfather used to run numbers in Chicago,” Brian reveals. “He was mafia and that got me — that was in my head: ‘I’m mafia. I’m mafioso. I’m from family — mafia family.”

Brian Muñiz drug use

Brian started smoking marijuana when he was 16. He stopped boxing when he was 17, then dropped out of high school and moved to California with a friend. The California Dream quickly evaporated.

Brian moved in with his brother, who was in the military in Oklahoma. Brian continued to smoke a lot of weed, and eventually his brother sent him back to Chicago.

After returning to Chicago, Brian’s mom got him a job as a file clerk at an insurance company. He soon married his high school sweetheart, and they had their daughter Briana a few years later.

Brian Muñiz the drug dealer

Brian Muñiz started selling weed with his friends to make some extra money. He says their fridge had at least a pound of marijuana at any given time.

Then Brian started doing cocaine. He says he was staying out until four or five in the morning, missing work, and having sex with other women. As a result, his marriage fell apart.

Brian moved in with an older lady, who turned out to be a cocaine supplier. Brian then went from selling marijuana to selling cocaine. (Based on information revealed later in the interview, it appears Brian married the woman at some point.)

During his cocaine dealer days, Brian says “every day was Saturday.” He talks about going to the clubs, driving drunk, having his house raided by the F.B.I. (who were looking for someone else), and more.

However, Brian says it was also a really dark time. “I wanted to commit suicide,” he admits. “The only reason I didn’t — I swear, the only reason I didn’t was because my daughter.”

One of Brian’s cocaine clients owned a car dealership and gave him a job (that wasn’t really a job) as a car salesman.

Brian Muñiz carjacking details

The relationship with his new wife went south, and Brian moved out. He moved into a safe house on the south side of Chicago where he kept the drugs he was dealing.

Brian came home one night after “working” at the dealership. “As I park my van, I see two guys across the street,” he recalls. Brian says he wasn’t worried because he was a pretty big guy — six foot tall and roughly 200-210 pounds.

One of the guys approached Brian’s van. Brian remembers him being thin. “Skinny crackhead — that’s all I could think of.”

“He comes to my door, covers his face and says, ‘Hey, get out of the car, I got a gun.'”

“I told him, ‘F**k you! I got a gun too.’ So I reached, but I didn’t have a gun. I just wanted to take off my seat belt, get out — one to the body, one to the head, and tear him up.”

“So, I got out thinking I was Bruce Lee,” Brian recalls, adding he had been smoking weed and that probably gave him “a little more gusto.”

Brian says he “went at” the guy, ducked down and went for his one shot. BANG! The guy delivered the one shot first in the form of a 22-calibre bullet to the shoulder that penetrated Brian’s spine.

“I fell straight onto the floor. He rolls me over, and now I’m a quadriplegic,” Brian says.

“‘If you get up I’m gonna run over you,'” the guy told Brian.

“I told him, ‘Dude, what did you do to me? I can’t even move.'”

Brian says he had seen other people get shot and still be able to run. He was in complete shock.

Carjacker sent by Brian’s ex-wife?

The guy took Brian’s Gucci watch and his wallet. Brian says the guy was sent by his drug supplier ex-wife and the watch and wallet were part of his payment. “He left in the van and took off.”

Brian was eventually hospitalized and went through rehab. He says the only people there for him through it all was his immediate family.

Thanks to a victims fund for people who are shot in Chicago, Brian received some money to help with his recovery.

“I think it was thirty thousand dollars,” Brian says. He says ten thousand dollars was spent on a ramp, lift and more at his mother’s house. Another ten thousand went towards a car. Brian says he blew the last ten thousand day trading stocks.

There is A LOT more in the interview with Charlie Smith — the full video is included below.

Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com