'Errant shot' may have killed teen

Steven Odom was 13 years old, a minister's son who played in an after-school basketball league and stayed away from drugs and trouble. He loved video games, cracking jokes, and had played drums since picking up a pair of drumsticks at his church when he was a toddler.

Steven was on his way home from shooting hoops with friends around 8 p.m. Thursday when he was shot in the head by a gunman police say was aiming at someone else. He was the second 13-year-old and the sixth victim under age 17 to die from gun violence in Boston this year.

"My cousin was in the wrong place at the wrong time, on his way home to meet his curfew," said Steven's cousin, Nakia Snow, 32, who was standing on Evans Street in Dorchester yesterday, across from the spot where Steven was shot.

Commissioner Edward F. Davis called the slaying, Boston's 52d this year, "a cowardly act" and said police have good leads in the case.

"We believe we know who the intended target was," Davis said. "But we don't know at this time whether he was with the victim. This is more of a case of an errant shot. The victim was not gang-related, but the incident could very well be."

As friends and relatives wept at the Odoms' house yesterday, coaches and teachers who knew the teenager struggled to explain his slaying to other children who are trying, as he did, they say, to avoid Boston's gun violence.

"If a young man like him can be killed just walking home after playing ball, that shows you every child in the city is vulnerable, no matter where you are," said the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge and a member of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, who visited Steven's family and middle school yesterday. "It's not just the Odom parents, but it's every parent in the city that should be extremely concerned about what's happening in the city right now."

Steven was an eighth-grader at Timilty Middle School in Dorchester and had three older brothers and an older sister. He attended True Vine Church in Dorchester, where his father, a postal worker, is the minister. For the past two summers, he was active in the Humboldt Youth Partnership for Empowerment, which sponsors movie nights and basketball tournaments for teenagers.

"This was a good Christian kid; he wasn't into any violence," said the Rev. Miniard Culpepper, who helps run the program. "There's a sense of outrage, and my prayers are that the community will rise up against senseless and outrageous killings. Enough is enough."

Yesterday, tears cascaded down 21-year-old Brandon Odom's cheeks as he cradled his dead brother's worn basketball in his hand. Standing on the sidewalk in front of his house, he looked skyward and shook his head. Nearby, on the driveway, his sister, Dionne, 15, hugged a relative and wept.

"The drums and basketball were his passion," Dionne said. "He started playing the drums when he was about 2 years old."

Dionne said her brother was a bit heavyset, but on the basketball court, he moved as swiftly as the skinny kids.

"He was my little brother, I loved him more than anything," she said, tears welling in her eyes. "This family, our upbringing was about finding the best in people, not to judge them by what they look like."

Alfred McClain, who coached Steven in a basketball league sponsored by the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, said, "He was one of the nicest kids in the world."

Throughout the day, neighbors, clergy, and other mourners congregated inside the yard and outside the chain-link fence bordering the family's yellow duplex. Many brought bags loaded with food, while some carried bouquets of flowers into the house.

As a school bus carrying about a dozen students passed by the house at about 2:30 p.m., students yelled out of the window "We love you Stevie!" The gesture brought applause from many of the mourners on the Odom lawn.

In the late afternoon, about a dozen children from the neighborhood sat on plastic chairs on the Odoms' front lawn and listened as Dionne and several youth ministers counseled them to discuss their sorrow. About 40 teens and adults encircled the children and held hands as one of the youth ministers prayed for peace.

A makeshift shrine was started in the morning with two stuffed animals, a lion, a white angelic cat, and about six candles. But as the day progressed posters and flowers were added, and by late afternoon the shrine had grown to cover a square of the sidewalk.

Police said Evans Street, which is in southeastern Dorchester, about a half mile from Dorchester High School, has been mostly free of gun violence, but the surrrounding streets have not, and they had stepped up patrols there.

"This is not a bad neighborhood," said Snow, who said she last saw her cousin at a Bible study class at his family's home.

Yesterday, police flooded the neighborhood with officers, some on bicycles and some on foot, who went door-to-door, handing out brochures advertising an anonymous tip line and asking residents if they had seen or heard anything suspicious.

At the Timilty school, a dozen grievance counselors met with the students in the packed auditorium and in classrooms yesterday morning. Many of the students were in tears, mostly eighth-graders who knew Steven, and some students were sent home early with their parents. Police plan to open the Mildred Avenue Community Center today from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. for grief counseling.

Emmet Folgert, executive director of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, which provides activities for teenagers, said he was struggling to explain the killing to other children.

"He made all the choices that we tell our kids to do, and they should be OK, and then he gets killed," Folgert said. "That really hits home to these other kids who are also making these choices, and now they don't feel safe either."

Tracey Jan of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story on Saturday about the shooting death of 13-year-old Steven Odom misidentified the location of the James P. Timilty Middle School, which he attended. It is in Roxbury.