Anguished mother says son's killing was personal
The Valentine's Day card Tacary Jones gave his mother last month still sits on her bedroom dresser. Yesterday, Henrietta Adger gazed at the card's words with teary eyes: ''To Ma: Happy V Day, Boo! Love Always. From: Cary."
''He wasn't a bad person, " Adger said of her 17-year-old son, who was killed in a brazen shooting on an MBTA bus Friday afternoon. ''He probably hung with the wrong people at the wrong time."
Hanging with the wrong people had gotten her son into trouble before, Adger said. In late 2003, she said, her son was shot in the buttocks by Ivan Hodge, 18, of Roxbury, who is now accused of killing him.
Two law enforcement officials said Jones had a criminal record that included at least one arrest on firearms charges.
Police could not confirm the details of the earlier shooting yesterday, but one police official with knowledge of the case said investigators are aware that Hodge had attacked Jones in the past.
Jones was gunned down in front of horrified passengers on a crowded T bus at the corner of Geneva Avenue and Columbia Road at about 2:30 p.m. Friday. A foot pursuit of the suspected shooter followed, and police arrested Hodge, who will be arraigned on murder and weapons charges tomorrow. Police are investigating the shooting, and would not comment officially about whether other suspects are at large. After the shooting, two law enforcement officers said there was only one shooter, but that other youths might have been involved.
Adger said her son did not carry a weapon or belong to a gang. But a detective with knowledge of the case and someone close to the victim said Jones was part of a gang of youths from Geneva Avenue. The person close to the victim, who insisted on anonymity because of fears of retribution, said that Hodge is a member of a gang called Crowned Path, whose members frequently fought with youths from Geneva Avenue.
''Their little group lost three of their friends, half were in jail and half were in the hospital," said the person who was close to Jones. ''For these kids this is an everyday thing: If they run into this person, they're going to die. . . . Surviving is a day-to-day thing. I talked to them every day about, 'You all are about to lose your life because of what street you live on.' "
Adger said her son has never lived on Geneva Avenue, and she does not believe he was a member of the gang. ''It was personal," she said of his killing.
Adger said she went to the police after her son was shot a year and a half ago, but Jones was unable to say who shot him, and the authorities did nothing. ''To me, it was a case where a young black kid got shot on the street and nothing was done," Adger said.
Adger said Hodge had been harassing her son since elementary school. She said her son rarely attended the Jeremiah E. Burke High School where he was a junior because Hodge frequently threatened him. Adger said she believes her son may have been set up because he was in such fear for his life that he did not normally take the bus.
Adger said a friend who was with her son when he was shot 18 months ago was also wounded and is paralyzed. She said the shooting frightened her. She said it frightened her son, too -- even if he would not admit it to his mother. ''He was afraid of the guns, the bullets," she said.
The Rev. Ray Hammond, who cofounded the nationally recognized community policing model known as the Ten Point Coalition, said the recent street violence and the shortage of patrol police officers concern him, but he said that even with more officers some shootings are hard to prevent.
''The concern for all of us becomes how much of this is in the realm of more one-on-one, random, respect-based, beef-based violence as opposed to gang violence," Hammond said. ''One is much easier to get intelligence on: gang violence. It's a lot harder to tell when people have a beef going on and decide to settle it violently."
Hammond acknowledged that sometimes individual fights are part of larger group battles, but said two police cars were just down the street from the bus when the shooting occurred. Their presence made no difference.
''We certainly would want more police out," Hammond said. ''We'd like to see the restoration of a lot of the funding that made it possible for the police to be out there increased. . . . But the notion that there's a one-to-one correlation between the police presence and four homicides at a time is harder to make."
To Jones's mother, the questions are moot. ''It's irrelevant to me now. My son is dead."
Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com. 