Slain man was celebrating new job, friend's birthday

On Friday afternoon Samuel DoCanto, 21, bragged about his first paycheck, shaking his hips and waving his arms above his head. "I got a job," DoCanto sing-songed, according to an 18-year-old friend.

Hours later, DoCanto was shot and killed on a dead-end street in Dorchester. The Roxbury man's death brings this year's homicide count to 38.

About 3 a.m., DoCanto was celebrating a friend's 21st birthday on the stoop of 96 Woodledge St., according to the friend, who asked to be not to be named for fear of retaliation.

Suddenly, shots rang out, the friend recalled. As partyers scrambled inside and up the worn linoleum stairs, DoCanto held open the door then climbed to the second-floor landing, the friend said.

But DoCanto was already bleeding from a gunshot wound, the friend said.

On the second floor, Beverly Pritchard , 49, woke up after her husband heard the shots and pushed her off the bed to safety. She cracked open her door and saw a man in a blue T-shirt and shorts splayed on the floor. Two young women at his side held fingers to his neck and wrists. "There's no pulse," Pritchard heard them say. "There's not a pulse."

Pritchard shut the door.

Police responded at 3:22 a.m. DoCanto was taken to Boston Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Yesterday on Pritchard's stoop, DoCanto's friend and three cousins arranged a memorial of candles, two bandannas tied around a railing, a half-empty bottle of fruit punch, and a cigarette. Someone had sprayed DoCanto's nickname, "Sam Da Bull," on the sidewalk.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said the friend, a shred of yellow police tape draped around her neck.

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