Urban violence spills onto sacred turf

He was shot in a Harvard dorm. Because of that, the Drudge Report, a high-traffic news website, linked to a story about the passing of a young black man. Because of that, the office of Middlesex District Attorney Gerald Leone got a call from a reporter in Paris. TV news helicopters hovered over the Cambridge campus.

Once it was determined that Cosby was not a Harvard University student, you know the next angle. Worlds collide. The Ivy League meets the Mean Streets.

One Harvard student told the Herald that when he heard the unfamiliar sound of gunshots, "I thought it was someone dropping two or three futons." Instead, it was someone dropping Denise Cosby's 21-year-old son.

Cosby said in an interview that she wanted people to know Justin was "a very outgoing, likeable kid. Everybody loved him. He would do anything for anybody. He was a joy to have as a son." She did not know why her son, who recently dropped out of Salem State College, would be in Harvard's Kirkland House late on a Monday afternoon. The locale mattered little to her anyway.

But the Harvard connection was the dominant theme at a news conference at Cambridge police headquarters. Did a Harvard student let him in? Did he have a relationship with Harvard students? Did Harvard security fail? Were Harvard students at risk?

Or course, those questions are relevant to understanding the circumstances of Cosby's death. And, if the answers yield a clear-cut tie to Harvard, they will turn this homicide into bigger news. Without a Harvard connection, the story loses altitude.

Had Cosby been shot a block away, the death of a Cambridge kid would not make headlines in Australia. That's just the way it is.

Right before the press conference on "the Harvard shooting," Boston police announced an arrest in the shooting death of 15-year-old Soheil Turner. He was cut down in Roxbury while waiting for a bus to take him to school. It was "a cold-blooded assassination of a middle school student," as a Suffolk assistant district attorney put it. The 18-year-old suspect who allegedly shot him went to high school afterward.

Turner's relative youth and lack of gang affiliation made his death local news. It would take much more than that to elicit overseas press calls.

When violence happens in certain places, most people ignore it. Police and prosecutors are left to make sure justice is served, even if no one but the victim's family is paying attention.

Yesterday, opening arguments began in the trial of a second defendant charged in the death of 19-year-old Corey Davis, another Cambridge shooting victim. He was shot in the back near Central Square in March 2006. One defendant was already found guilty of murder, in what amounted to "an execution of this victim," the district attorney said. "The jury thankfully rejected the defendant's position that Corey Davis was somehow not a priority and somehow not worthy of a verdict on his behalf."

But cases like that do not get helicopter news treatment. Urban violence is tolerated until it spills onto more sacred turf.

Campus violence is less shocking than it used to be, but colleges are still considered sanctuaries.

One Kirkland House resident told the Globe, "The one thing that kind of freaked me out was how did those people get in."

Harvard dorm residents need an electronic swipe card to gain access. The district attorney does not believe Cosby's presence inside this dorm was an accident, and law enforcement officials are investigating possible ties with students.

"We believe he was in there for a reason," said one source. The reason could be as innocent as friendship, or it could be darker and more complicated.

But when the story is told, it will, once again, be mostly about Harvard.

Without that element, will the world care about a Cambridge Rindge & Latin School graduate, who played intramural college basketball and called home to say, "Mom, I love you"?

Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com.