Holiday violence leaves city on edge
Residents are unnerved after 3 die and 5 are hurt in shootings and a beating
A teenager fatally shot in the head at a holiday cookout in Hyde Park, the crackle of gunshots and firecrackers mingling in the evening air. A 20-year-old killed in a drive-by shooting, gunned down outside his Roxbury home. A homeless man brazenly beaten to death in broad daylight, near hundreds of shoppers at Faneuil Hall Marketplace.
In a staggering spate of holiday violence, those were just the fatalities. In all, seven people were shot in Boston, two fatally, in four separate shootings during an eight-hour stretch from Friday evening to early yesterday morning. Touching four of the city's neighborhoods, the night ranked among the bloodiest in the last several years, and the concentration of violence unnerved neighbors, alarmed police and city leaders, and raised fears of a grim summer marred by escalating reprisals.
"It's horrible because I have an 18-year-old, and just him leaving the house is horrible," said Tabitha Brown, who lives near the site of the Roxbury killing. "I can't imagine what the rest of the summer will be like."
Police said they had promising leads in all three homicides and were confident arrests would be made soon. Both the neighborhood shootings appeared to be targeted retaliations by rival gangs, police said.
"We believe that in both cases, the suspects and the victims knew each other," said Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis. "We have very strong leads, and expect arrests soon."
Davis urged city residents to remain calm, saying the burst of violence was not necessarily a harbinger of a troubled summer to come. There have now been 33 killings in Boston this year, one more than at this time a year ago, according to police.
"Unfortunately the summer months in every urban area bring out an increase in crime. We see it every year," he said. "But I don't think we should let one night dictate any undue fear."
Davis said police stepped up home visits yesterday, meeting personally with teenage gang members in an attempt to avert retaliations.
In the fatal beating, Davis said a number of witnesses had come forward, and that footage from security cameras was helping investigators identify the perpetrators.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said the rapid succession of shootings made for a very difficult night.
"Things were going so well for so long, it's difficult to figure out," he said. "You wonder, 'Why all of a sudden?' But we have some good leads and are going to push for justice in these cases."
Menino said police would redouble efforts to crack down on gang activity and he did not expect the flurry of violence to continue.
Police did not release the names of the victims, but family members identified the slain Roxbury man as Jarvis Anderson, a 20-year-old who loved writing and producing music and who hoped to attend college to study engineering.
A few months ago, his family said, Anderson wrote and helped engineer an antiviolence song called "Put the Guns Down."
"He worked a lot, and never got in trouble with the law or anything," said Anderson's mother, Carolyn Anderson, who shared her Roxbury home with him. "So I just don't understand this."
Family members said Anderson, a delivery man at a Bertucci's restaurant, spent his spare time at the music studio and visiting family. They insisted he was not a gang member and had done his best to avoid trouble.
"I don't understand, because I've never known him to have any enemies," said Anderson's aunt, Patricia Scott, from her Roxbury home, a short walk from Anderson's home. "There have been a lot of shootings but Jarvis never got mixed up in it. He didn't follow trouble - he was always his own person."
Anderson was shot about 1:30 a.m. About a half-hour later, four people were shot in a car outside a Tedeschi food shop on Hyde Park Avenue in Hyde Park after being approached by a group of young men, police said. The four were able to speed away from the gunmen and call for help and were later transported to local hospitals with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
About 4 a.m., a man in his early to mid-20s was shot in Uphams Corner in Dorchester, also sustaining nonlife-threatening injuries.
Two other Boston residents were shot in Fitchburg Thursday night, one fatally. Nelson Ortega, 32, of Roslindale, was killed by a bullet wound to the head during an outdoor holiday celebration. Ryan O'Neill, 19, also of Roslindale, was in good condition yesterday after being shot in the back, according to Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.'s office. Authorities are investigating, but have not determined a motive.
In Boston yesterday, residents said they were deeply concerned by the violence, which they feared would worsen as the summer progressed.
"You get worried," said Bernardo Rodriguez, a Roxbury resident for 40 years. "You leave your house and you don't know if you're going to make it home."
But that fear, some ministers said, is slowly turning into resolve.
"People are pushing back," said the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor at the Union Baptist Church in Cambridge and cofounder of the Boston TenPoint Coalition. "The community can't support a summer of funerals and hospital visits. There's no tolerance for another summer of violence."
At the corner of Lewiston and Edwardson streets in Hyde Park, the site of the slaying at a cookout, dozens of teenagers gathered to pay tribute to their fallen friend.
They placed teddy bears on a telephone pole and lit candles on the ground below.
Beside a picture of the victim, they wrote that they missed and loved him, and spray painted farewell messages on the ground in red. They declined requests to talk about or even name their friend, whose nickname was 1-yell.
Globe correspondent John Guilfoil contributed to this report. 