Patrols to rise after boy, 13, is wounded

BHA responds to South End attack

The boy was shot outside the Cathedral housing development early yesterday. Police believe he was not the intended target. (George Rizer/Globe Staff)

The Boston Housing Authority will step up police patrols in a South End housing development after a 13-year-old boy was shot and seriously wounded early yesterday by two bicyclists.

William McGonagle, spokesman for the BHA, said the Brighton middle school student was shot multiple times just steps from his family's home in the Cathedral housing development. The boy was taken to Boston Medical Center and then to Children's Hospital Boston for surgery, his family said. The hospital said he was in good condition.

McGonagle and Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll both said it appears that the 13-year-old was not the target of the gunfire.

"He is certainly not known to our police department as being a youngster that has been in trouble," McGonagle said. "He's not been on our police department's radar screen."

McGonagle said BHA police will give the development increased attention "for the foreseeable future until we get to the bottom of this."

Driscoll said detectives have not discovered the gunmen's target. But she said the target may have been among the victim's friends.

At the request of police, the Globe is withholding the name of the victim and his stepfather, who provided both the teen's name and his own name to a Globe reporter during an interview.

The stepfather, with tears streaming down his face yesterday, said his stepson is an excellent student who is not the kind of teen who usually hangs around street corners. He said the boy more often spends his time indoors playing electronic games with friends.

The teenager was shot around 1 a.m. by two male suspects riding bicycles, one of whom was wearing a ski mask and dark sunglasses, police and residents said.

A friend of the wounded teenager who asked that his name not be published because of concerns for his safety said about seven teens were hanging out in a courtyard along Mystic Street when the victim's mother summoned him home on his cellphone.

The boy left the courtyard, and was just a few feet from his family's door - his mother was in a second-floor window watching her son's progress, her husband said - when at least three shots were fired by the bicyclists.

All the teens ran inside the building while the terrified boy, instead of completing his run home, turned around and followed his friends, repeatedly telling them that it was not firecrackers they had just heard, but bullets.

The victim held out his bloodstained hand as proof, the friend said. " 'I'm not lying,' " the wounded boy told his friends, his hand dripping with his own blood. " 'It wasn't firecrackers. I got shot. I got shot.' "

The friend said the two suspects both wore hooded sweatshirts pulled over their faces. Another teen interviewed with the friend who also would not provide his name said one of the assailants wore a ski mask on the lower half of his face and sunglasses.

The victim's stepfather said his wife watched from a second floor window as her son first started coming home and then abruptly changed direction. He said his wife did not hear the gunfire or witness the moment when her son was shot, but did see the bicyclists speed down Mystic Street and across Washington Street.

Boston public schools were closed for vacation and officials at headquarters and at the middle school in Brighton could not be reached.

The stepfather said he was shocked, not only because his stepson is involved but because he lets his younger daughters use the development's playground.

"Nothing bad happens," he said of the area. "It's very quiet."