'Things happen'
Guns pose policing challenge, but violence jades residents
It only took a moment for a Fourth of July barbecue on Lyndhurst Street to turn into a senseless bloodbath.
One minute, Bernard Lynch, 35, was serving hamburgers and hot dogs to more than 800 relatives, neighbors, and even strangers who had crashed his birthday bash at 26 Lyndhurst, just three houses away from the troubled cluster of apartments called the Hell Zone.
The next minute, three men were lighting firecrackers in the middle of the street. Lynch's 70-year-old father asked them to stop. One of them punched him in the face. Lynch rushed to the defense of his father. One of the men pulled out a gun and began firing.
One bullet ripped through the right side of Lynch's stomach. Another round struck one of the three men, Marcus DuBose, 28, in the head, killing him. The assailant left the scene; there have been no arrests.
''Marcus was with them," Lynch said. ''They killed their own man."
''It all happened so fast," said Lynch, lifting up his shirt and pointing to the two wounds on his torso: one neat round scar on the front, where the bullet went in, and an equally neat scar on the back, where it exited his body.
He was lucky; the round pierced no organs, and now, a month later, he is able to function as though the shooting never happened.
How to prevent such shootings is a problem Boston Police Captain Frank Armstrong, commander of Division C-11, has yet to solve.
''Things would be a lot better if guys were just punching each other out, like they used to do," said Armstrong, adding that the police can generally get to a scene before people beat each other to death. ''Now they have guns."
Armstrong said he does not have enough police officers to monitor the corner of Lyndhurst and Washington streets or anywhere else in his district where violence and crime occur.
''Often, we are forced to react to what's happening, rather then heading it off," he said. ''That's the challenge of urban policing."
Yesterday, police arrested three men in an apartment two blocks from Lyndhurst, on Wheatland Avenue. Detective Sergeant Al Terestre, who made the arrest, said police recovered marijuana, cocaine, and a sawed-off shotgun.
Terestre said the suspects usually sell drugs on Lyndhurst Street, but had moved away because of the Rev. Bruce Wall's one-week occupation of the single-block street.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole patrolled Lyndhurst Street yesterday evening with Wall, who has vowed to eradicate the drug dealing and violence that has centered on the Hell Zone.
''There's just no respect in our society today," Menino said. ''Out here today, people will just murder someone for no reason. . . . We try and try, but we need help from the community."
Lynch, an ironworker, has his own solution to the problem: A couple of years ago, the family installed two surveillance cameras mounted on each side of his front door.
They help, but on July 4 they could not prevent a bullet from whizzing through the window of his mother-in-law's bedroom on the second floor of the house his family has owned for more than 30 years. The hole is still there.
But Lynch says he does not think Wall's action is necessary.
''This is a decent neighborhood; we don't need all this," he said. ''I don't think it's worse than any other neighborhood. Things happen on every street."
Cradling his 1-year-old daughter, Kaytlyn, Lynch pointed to the corner of Lyndhurst and Washington.
''You just let the drug dealers do what they do, and I do what I do," he said.
''It's not that bad." 