Slaying at store shocks neighborhood
Father says victim had been involved in fights recently
Alan Peguero played in the aisles of his father's convenience store in Dorchester as a child, and as a man he often ran it, taking deliveries from suppliers, checking receipts, and greeting customers with a smile and kind words.
On Tuesday night, Peguero was shot to death inside the Quick Stop Market at 124 Harvard St., shortly after arguing with an unidentified person near the entrance. Police say Peguero, who would have turned 21 Saturday, was the target of the shooting.
"At this time investigators do not believe that this was a random incident," said Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for Boston police.
Alinson Peguero, 48, said that his son was involved in at least two fights in the past couple of weeks.
"He came home with his face marked, and he told us he was in a fight, but he never said who it was," Alinson Peguero said. "We asked him, but he didn't say."
Alinson Peguero said that he had taken Tuesday night off and that his son had been running the store.
"Another employee called me at my house and told me about gunshots. I drove to the store, but there was traffic and I got there late. When I got there, the ambulance was leaving, and the police told me it was OK. Then a nephew told me that my son died."
Yesterday, at the Peguero home in Jamaica Plain, the victim's family gathered in the living room and mourned.
And at the store, where so many neighbors had grown accustomed to Peguero's bright smile, several of the victim's cousins erected a memorial. A white T-shirt inscribed with remembrances of the victim written by relatives and friends hung on a steel shutter covering the store entrance. The initials MZP and the phrase "Mozart Park Boyz" were scrawled on the T-shirt and on the store's walls, apparently a reference to Mozart Street, which is a short walk from the victim's home.
"I talked to him at 7:30, and he was shot an hour later," said a man who identified himself as a cousin of the victim. "He was excited because he was about to get his car out of the shop. He put a new engine in it, and he had it painted," the man said, referring to Alan Peguero's 1995 Honda Civic hatchback. Moments later, a woman drove up to the front of the store, tears streaming down her cheeks as she got out of a car. She sat on the sidewalk, next to the candles, and repeatedly yelled, "I can't believe my cousin's dead."
Alan Peguero was born in Boston. His father moved to Boston from the Dominican Republic and bought the store from an uncle 17 years ago. Alan Peguero's uncle, Jorge Peguero, owns a similar convenience store about 2 miles away, on Bowdoin Street.
"The whole family works so hard," said Shirlyn Fredrick, who owns the building where the Quick Stop Market is located.
"I watched Alan grow up here, from a little boy to a man," she said, staring at the memorial. "There have been shootings around here, but nothing in the store like this."
Michael Noddell, a sales representative for Yell-O-Glow Corp., which supplies fruit to the store, said he has known the family for years.
"The father worked very hard and he often left Alan to take care of the store," Noddell said. "The father would leave thinking everything was safe."
A stream of people passed the closed store yesterday and paused before the memorial.
Realizing that Alan Peguero had been shot dead, some expressed shock.
A boy and two girls walking home from school stopped in front of the memorial. The boy placed his hands together in front of his face, his palms touching and his fingers pointing toward the sky. He closed his eyes and prayed. 