Curbside memorial honors a life

Slain man sought way out of 'hood'

By April Yee, Globe Correspondent  |  June 12, 2007

A woman tipped a bottle of Heineken onto the black asphalt of the Cathedral development parking lot, the white foam trickling into a sewer grate near where Boston police say Angel Ortiz, 23, was fatally shot late Sunday.

She gulped down the rest of the beer, before resting the container on a curbside memorial erected after Ortiz was pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.

A stuffed St. Bernard, empty bottles of Hennessy and Absolut, and a T-shirt featuring slain rapper Tupac Shakur marked the death of Ortiz in the South End.

Ortiz's was the 27th homicide reported this year in Boston up to yesterday, the same number as last year, said David Estrada, a Boston police spokesman.

Saying they feared retaliation, many residents declined to talk about Ortiz, who, records show, had spent the past two years in and out of jail. In 2005, he served six months at the South Bay House of Correction for possession of a Class D substance, according to the Suffolk Sheriff's Department. He returned from May 2006 until January for violation of a restraining order. One week later, he went back after violating parole.

After his release March 7, Ortiz stayed for a few months in his sister's third-floor unit in Cathedral development, and while there, she said, he met many of the residents who came to his memorial.

Kirk Womack, a program director at the Salvation Army bureau near the building where Ortiz stayed, said Ortiz coached children at basketball and talked of opening his own business.

"That's his way out of the 'hood," Womack said.

His sister Michelle Ortiz, 20, said she last saw Ortiz on Sunday night, riding his bike around the development's courtyard and parking lot. "He said, 'I love you, Michelle,' and he gave me a kiss and a hug," she said yesterday. "Two minutes after that, they call me [saying] that he got shot."

From her apartment, Michelle Ortiz said she rushed to the parking lot, where Ortiz, shot in his left eye, was lying on his back. She followed the ambulance that took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police are investigating the death as a homicide, but gave no information about events leading up to Ortiz's death or suspects.

Yesterday, Michelle Ortiz brought her brother's white T-shirt emblazoned with dollar signs to the memorial. Kneeling, another woman wrote on the shirt: "Remember we was tha illest at what we did but you in a better place . . . Miss u Love you."

April Yee can be reached at ayee@globe.com.