Five days. Six shootings. One stabbing. Four deaths. Yesterday marked the end of a bloody week in Boston.
"It's probably more than we experience on average," Officer Eddy Chrispin, Boston police spokesman, said yesterday in a phone interview.
On Walnut Avenue in Roxbury yesterday, candles surrounded a stuffed panda bear and tiger, memorializing Boston's most recent homicide victim, Ruel Davis, 21, of Dorchester.
Davis was shot about 10 p.m. Friday in front of his girlfriend's apartment. He died early Saturday.
No arrests have been reported in any of the week's violence as of last evening.
"When'd that happen? Was he young?" asked a man in a silver Ford sport utility vehicle who was passing by the shooting scene. When told what had occurred, the man shook his head and drove away.
Davis was shot one day after two shooting victims were found three blocks away on the same street with wounds to their legs and buttocks. Police did not release the names of the victims, who they said are expected to survive; and they would not comment on whether the two incidents are related.
"Why is all this happening?" asked Davis's uncle, who asked that his name not be printed because he feared retaliation.
"These streets are crazy right now," he said in an interview at the home in Dorchester he and Davis shared with the victim's grandmother. Davis worked in construction, but with two stints in prison behind him, finding honest work was difficult, his uncle said.
"He wasn't a bad person," he said. "He was trying to make it in this cold world . . . After he got out [of prison], he had a hard time finding work."
Davis had moved to Boston from Jamaica when he was 14 and attended Dorchester High School, relatives said. He was remembered as a fun-loving jokester who loved his family.
"He wouldn't let me walk with him on the streets cause people had problems with him, and he didn't want anything to happen to me," said Davis's cousin Patrick Walker, 16, at Davis's home.
The two had planned to get together over the weekend.
"He was good at everything," said Walker, who had planted a "Pray Peace" sign in front of Davis's home.
Yesterday, police identified two more recent victims of apparent homicides. Adolphus King, 54, of Dorchester was shot Tuesday in an apartment on Beale Street. Police said he died Thursday.
Wednesday, Ruben L. Najera, 27, of Quincy was stabbed to death on Geneva Avenue in Dorchester, the same day police shot and killed Marquis Barker, 38, after he stole a police cruiser and waved what turned out to be a pellet gun at them in Mattapan.
A man was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries Saturday after another shooting at the intersection of Torrey and Moody streets, police said.
As of Nov. 18, police had logged 47 shooting deaths since the beginning of the year, one less than had occurred during the same period last year.
Homicides in general were down, with 61 as of Nov. 18, compared with 68 last year, records show.
