Shot for 3d time, man critically injured
2 others hurt in attack at Grove Hall apartment
His love of basketball, his wheelchair, and his street-tough sensibility had won him the nicknames Hops, Wheelie, and Hoffa. Twice as a teenager in Orchard Park he had been hit by gunfire; the first time, when he was 15, left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Yesterday, Jason Collins, 30, was shot again, for the third time, while he was in his wheelchair in his apartment in the Grove Hall section of Roxbury. He was struck in a daytime attack on Schuyler Street that also wounded two other people. Police said they had made no arrests and had not identified any suspects. Collins was in serious condition at a local hospital last night.
The attack happened at 10:40 a.m. when a gunman entered Collins's apartment and opened fire, said a law enforcement official briefed on the case. The gunman hit Collins and two other men and fled on foot. Authorities would not comment on a motive.
Police have not identified the victims, but the official and neighbors said the man in the wheelchair was Collins. After the attack, Collins's bloody wheelchair sat on the street as police collected forensic evidence. It was unclear how his wheelchair made it to the street. The official said Collins was the most seriously injured of the three victims. The injuries the other two men sustained were not life-threatening, police said.
Neighbors reported hearing gunfire. Within minutes, the area was crowded with news trucks, police cars, and onlookers. The attack happened a block away from a bustling section of Blue Hill Avenue that includes a mosque, a shopping center, and a school. But the area -- clustered with brick apartment buildings and large, wooden homes -- has seen its share of gunplay, drug-dealing, and crime, said a neighborhood activist.
''It's been a hot spot for a while," said Jorge Martinez, executive director of Project RIGHT, a nonprofit group that tries to reduce crime and poverty in Grove Hall. ''There are some good people up there. It's just a few people who are making it unlivable and dangerous."
Police cordoned off the area as they searched for evidence and took photographs. At about 2:30 p.m., officers rolled the wheelchair into an evidence truck.
''Jason's alive!" a woman screamed after running under the yellow tape. Some neighbors said they had heard shots but had not seen the gunman. Collins is a popular figure in Grove Hall.
Collins was a promising basketball player for East Boston High School before he was shot in the neck and paralyzed in 1989, while he was in the Orchard Park housing development in Roxbury, according to newspaper reports. He had been running from a man with whom he had been arguing when he was hit from behind, police said at the time.
People who saw him play still remember his skill.
''He was a heck of a ballplayer," said Chris Sumner, executive director of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, who remembers watching Collins on the court. ''As a young kid, he was like everybody's son, everybody's kid. Everybody knew: D-1 [Division 1 college basketball] all the way."
Two years later, Collins was shot again, in the stomach and leg, when he was 17, close to the spot where he had been shot the first time. In 1997, when he was 23, he was arrested in a crackdown on drug dealers in Orchard Park. He was among 16 people arrested who were believed to have been members of a gang known as the Orchard Park Trailblazers, according to a federal indictment.
More recently, in August he had coached in the Biv 10 basketball tournament, which is sponsored by Michael Bivins, a singer with the groups New Edition and Bell Biv Devoe, who grew up in Boston, Sumner said.
Friends said Collins had been trying to turn his life around since he was released from prison in 1999, where he had served about 18 months on the federal charge of dealing crack cocaine. He had set up a music studio in his apartment, according to a friend.
''He's a good guy. I'm not saying he was perfect, but he's trying," said the friend, who did not want his name used because of his relationship with Collins's family. ''Three times (being shot) -- you say is God watching over you or not -- I'm not going to get engaged in a religious discussion -- but He's got to be looking over him. He's got to be watching."
John Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report. 