A family seeks answers

It was just after noon, Oct. 15, 1994, and Darrell Robinson had just dropped off his girl-friend's jacket at the dry cleaners when they surrounded him on a Roxbury sidewalk.

They shot him so many times he was probably dead before he hit the ground.

He was 26, and when the cops arrived his eyes were still open.

Robinson's sister, Annie Powell-Konyeaso, and his mother, Emma Ross, were in a car on Dudley Street and were trying to drive down East Cottage Street but got turned back by a police cordon.

Had they been able to, they would have driven right by Darrell's body. As it was, they didn't find out until later that evening that Darrell had been killed.

In the 13 years that have lapsed since a detective told them Darrell had been shot to death, his family has not heard a word from anyone in any position of authority.

Not a visit, not a phone call, not a letter.

Nothing.

Not only does Darrell Robinson's killing remain unsolved, his family has received no information about the circumstances surrounding it.

"It hurts. It still hurts," Annie was saying, sitting on the sofa in her Roslindale home while her 13-year-old daughter, Ashley, sat at the dining room table, studying for a test.

According to testimony in an unrelated federal case two years ago, Darrell Robinson fell afoul of a group of Cape Verdean gangbangers led by a guy named Gus Lopes.

After he got caught with guns, Gus Lopes became a government witness and testified that his brother Nardo Lopes and three others - Danny Ortiz, Adielo DaRosa, and Joe Rosa - formed the assassination team that cornered Darrell Robinson on that sidewalk 13 years ago. Gus Lopes testified that he got rid of the weapon used in the killing.

Despite that admission, no one has been charged with Darrell Robinson's killing. His family read about Gus Lopes's testimony in the Globe three months ago and, reluctantly, came forward to ask why nothing has happened.

Robinson's family says it didn't know he had anything to do with the young men who are alleged to have killed him. They say Darrell was smart - he got into Boston Latin School and attended Fisher College - but got hooked on drugs, messing up what looked like a bright future.

He went through rehab and got cleaned up, got a job at a day-care center not far from the spot where he was killed.

He had two kids, a boy and a girl. His daughter, Tiesha, is 20, just got out of college, and wants to open a day-care center.

"As I get older, I think about my dad more," Tiesha said, sitting across from her aunt Annie.

"I think, what would it have been like to have my daddy. Most of all, I want to know what happened to him, and why."

Robinson's family is a big clan, and every two years they gather for a reunion, some 200 of them. They had it at the Sheraton in Back Bay a couple of months ago.

"It's a joyous occasion," Odell Robinson, Darrell's 50-year-old brother, said.

"But you know something? At every reunion, what happened to Darrell comes up, and we all sit there looking at each other and no one knows what to say."

Emma Ross went to her grave last year, consumed by uncertainty.

As she lay on her death bed, she turned to her daughter and asked, "Did they ever catch the ones who killed my baby, my Darrell?"

"No, mama," Annie replied. "They never did."

Annie Powell-Konyeaso knows the police and prosecutors and everybody else who is supposed to speak for the dead are busy.

But she wonders if, to some, her brother just wasn't important enough, just another young African-American man, dead on the street, forgotten.

"Darrell was loved," Annie said, nodding.

"He mattered. He was my brother."

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.