Roxbury man convicted in 2006 slaying

May 23, 2008 07:26 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Jillian Jorgensen, Globe Staff

A Roxbury man was convicted of shooting his neighbor to death in 2006 after a night of drinking and smoking marijuana, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office announced today.

Akiel Civil, 23, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm for shooting his neighbor, Kevin Hines, also 23, in the back of the head when the man was visiting Civil's apartment on Nov. 3, 2006.

Prosecutors said Civil had spent the night drinking, dancing and smoking marijuana with a female friend and later another man, Rahsaan Lashley, 22, of Dorchester, in Civil’s Georgia Street apartment. Civil allegedly showed them a revolver he kept in his bureau twice that evening.

Hines, who lived upstairs in the same building, came to Civil’s apartment around midnight and also drank and danced with the young woman. When he was leaving the apartment, he embraced her, and Civil got the revolver out of his bureau and shot Hines in the back of the head, killing him, prosecutors said in a statement.

After the shooting, Civil moved Hines’s body out of his bedroom window, into the back yard, and then back into the apartment building, leaving him in a stairwell. He and Lashley fled, prosecutors said.

Three days later, Civil turned himself in to Boston Police detectives. Lashley was charged as an accessory after the fact for allegedly helping Civil move the body, but he was acquitted.

Until his sentencing on June 30, Civil will be held without bail.