Shooting suspect identified

Woman fatally wounded, 4 others hurt over weekend

A memorial was set up on Elder Street in Dorchester for Alexandra ''Xanda'' Gomes who was fatally shot early Sunday. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

It was just after 2 a.m., but the young man and his friends had no plans to call it a night. They were hanging out on Elder Street in Dorchester, hoping to find a party and chatting, when a man in a hooded sweatshirt walked up to them, pulled out a gun, and began to shoot.

The young man felt something sting his back, ducked his head, and ran as fast as he could toward Columbia Road.

"I didn't even look back," said the victim, a lanky Dorchester man in his 20s who asked that his name be withheld because he fears for his life. The gunman, he said, aimed "for anybody that was out there. It was reckless."

As police and ambulances rushed to the scene early Sunday, the young man realized that one of the bullets had grazed his back. He later learned that the shooter had fired on his best friend and her sister, Alexandra "Xanda" Gomes, who were part of a large crowd of young people hanging out on Elder Street that evening.

Gomes, a 19-year-old mother who wanted to become a nurse, was pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.

Her 18-year-old sister was shot in the leg, but survived the injuries.

"I can't even go to sleep," said the man, speaking in the foyer of his home, looking pale and rubbing his watery eyes. "I feel guilty. I should have died."

A 23-year-old man and a 30-year-old man were also injured during the shooting. Their injuries were not life-threatening. Police said they have identified a potential suspect in the shooting and are investigating the possibility that one of the injured was also the shooter. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said that the victim grazed in the back was not a suspect.

Detectives speculate that the gunman may have been shot when someone in the crowd fired back at him, the official said. Police have not described a motive, but the official said that Gomes was not a target.

The violence terrified the neighborhood during a bloody weekend in the city. It began early Friday morning, when a 41-year-old man and a 17-year-old youth were shot on Walnut Place in Roxbury and suffered injuries that were not life threatening. On Sunday night, three teenagers were shot on Humboldt Avenue in Roxbury in what police believe was a gang-related attack. The teenagers were expected to survive.

The violence continued yesterday when a man called police in the afternoon and told them he had been shot in the arm on Washington Street.

About an hour before the fatal shooting, police had gone to a house on Elder Street to respond to the large crowd, the loud music blaring on the street, and the potential for a fight, said Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the department. They arrested a teenager for possession of alcohol. It is unclear whether the shooting and the arrest are connected.

The shooting devastated Gomes's large, tight-knight family, which has lived in the Glendale Street house in Dorchester for at least 20 years, a cousin said. Yesterday, relatives mourned inside the beige and brown three-decker, where Gomes lived with her 1-year-old daughter, sister, brother, and mother. Her cousins, aunt, and uncle also live in the house.

Yesterday morning, the sobbing inside could be heard on the porch.

"It's just crying, crying, and crying," said Gomes's cousin, Janice DePina, who lives across the street. She said she woke up Sunday at 6 a.m. to Gomes's mother wailing in the street.

"They're all a nice family and they're very overprotective of each other," said DePina, 28, whose daughter is about the same age as Gomes's child. "This is really bad."

Gomes's uncle, Jose, said the family is eager to see the gunman arrested.

"I want him to give himself up and say why he shot my niece. Why?" he said, standing outside the Glendale house. "What did she do to him? . . . My heart is turned upside down."

People often gather on Elder Street before heading off to parties, said the young victim, who described himself as the best friend of Gomes's younger sister. He said he has lost other friends, and a cousin six years ago, to gun violence.

"Everybody on Elder Street, we all just live life to the fullest. We have to," he said. "Live it like it's our last day."

Gomes was a lovable, playful woman who liked to give people nicknames, he said.

"A happy, happy girl. She's an innocent in all this," he said. Around his neck he wore a plastic rosary, which he wore the day he was shot.

"The doctor said this is what saved me," he said, fingering the beads.

Gomes was particularly close to her sister, with whom she often went out at night, DePina said. But she also doted on her daughter and boasted about how the child, at a year and a half, already could count to five, DePina said.

On Sunday, DePina visited the family and saw Gomes's child playing with her father. She was counting.

"That's where she got me crying," DePina said. "I thought about my daughter and what if that happened to me. What would happen to my daughter? Who's going to take care of the baby?"

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.