Jury deliberates murder charge in slaying that sparked Cape Verdean violence
By Globe Staff
Thirteen years ago, the fatal stabbing of Bobby Mendes during a brawl on Dorchester Street touched off a civil war in Boston’s Cape Verdean community, unleashing a wave of violence that law enforcement officials say has included two dozen slayings and some 70 shootings.
 Arnaldo "Nardo" Lopes |
This afternoon, a Suffolk Superior Court jury began deliberating the fate of Arnaldo "Nardo" Lopes, the accused who acknowledged on the witness stand that he plunged a knife into Mendes's chest that evening in October 1995. Lopes testified during the four-day trial that he acted in self defense as Mendes and two of his cousins attacked him with pieces of metal and wood.
The prosecution disputed Lopes's version of events, alleging that the 17-year-old was angry after being teased about a pending firearm charge.
"The older kids were laughing at him,” prosecutor Dennis Collins told the jury today during his closing argument, according to the Suffolk District Attorney's office.
Prosecutors said that an argument on Wendover Street escalated to a fistfight and Lopes pulled a knife. Mendes allegedly taunted Lopes, and he responded.
“When the defendant went at Bobby with the knife," Collins said, "he was committing murder.”
Lopes, now 30 years old, is facing a second-degree murder charge, which carries a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years. The jury could also convict him of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Lopes fled Boston after the slaying and was captured by police in 2007 outside Baltimore. When he testified on Tuesday, Lopes insisted that prosecution witnesses were wrong. He told the jury he was riding his bike on Wendover Street when Mendes's relative, Larry Andrade, began arguing with him and knocked him to the ground. Andrade has since been murdered in one of an estimated 24 killings authorities have attributed to fallout from Mendes's death.
Lopes said that Mendes was the aggressor and not the peacemaker prosecution witnesses have described.
"I'm going to (expletive) him up,"' Lopes quoted Mendes as shouting after he was stabbed.
After the stabbing, Lopes said that he was chased from the scene. His family's home was surrounded by Mendes's relatives, he said, so he called 911 and told police he had acted in self-defense.
"My initial plan was to turn myself in," he said. "But the time never really felt right."
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