Man wanted in '05 slaying is arrested

A Dorchester man wanted in the 2005 gunshot killing of a Brockton father of five was arrested Tuesday in Baltimore, authorities said yesterday.

Ernest Ferguson, 24, is expected to be charged with murder when he returns to Boston, police said.

Authorities had been searching for Ferguson since the slaying of Bryan Whitsey, 37, a handyman, who was sitting on a stoop in Roxbury with relatives and neighbors in his former neighborhood when a gunman ran up behind him and fired four shots into his back, police said.

The assailant ran into a nearby alley, jumped into a black Lexus, and sped off, witnesses said.

Whitsey, described by relatives as a family man who had never been in trouble, was pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.

Whitsey's relatives have said they believe the killing was a result of mistaken identity.

"He has never been in any trouble," Whitsey's uncle, Demetrius Chambers, said at the time of the killing.

Police said the arrest resulted from the efforts of Boston and Baltimore police, and the Suffolk district attorney's office.