Killings equal 10-year high

Boston reached a grim benchmark yesterday, recording its 65th and 66th homicides this year, surpassing the total for all of last year and equaling a 10-year high.

An unidentified 17-year-old male, found with multiple gunshot wounds late Monday at the corner of George and Langdon streets, died early yesterday at Boston Medical Center, police said. Another 17-year-old, who was shot in the head Thanksgiving evening on Woodbine Street, was also pronounced dead yesterday, police said. A family member has identified him as Dion Taylor.

The youths were, like many of this year's homicide victims, young men shot to death in Roxbury.

Clarimundo Da Silva, who said he ran out of his home across the street when he heard the gunfire around 10:30 p.m. Monday, found a teenager sprawled on the ground with several gunshot wounds to the chest and a blood-soaked white T-shirt. The youth was asking for his mother.

''I said, 'Wait, the ambulance is coming, you're going to talk to your mother,' " Da Silva said. ''I thought he was going to make it."

By last night, police had made no arrests in either case, also typical for this year's homicides. According to a preliminary department count, police have arrested or identified suspects in only 20 of the 66 cases.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said yesterday that he is upset by the rising death toll and that police are working hard to address the problem.

The mayor said he hopes to launch an anonymous call-in center that could pay tipsters for information about illegal guns and initiate a public education campaign emphasizing the importance of telling police about people who carry guns illegally. He said that when he talked Monday night to young people, six said they knew people with guns, but none did anything about it.

''There's so many guns out there," Menino said in an interview. ''It is so frustrating.'

He praised the Police Department for flooding the Grove Hall section of Roxbury with officers over the weekend to focus on prostitution, drugs, gangs, firearms, and after-hours parties and for making 43 arrests on drug and other charges and outstanding warrants. Menino said police will continue to use the swarming tactic to arrest criminals in neighborhoods where they believe large numbers of people with arrest warrants are living.

Yesterday morning, Menino went to John Winthrop School in Dorchester, less than a mile from Monday night's shooting and the scene Monday afternoon of a shooting that outraged residents and politicians alike. No one was injured when people in two minivans shot at each other while driving past the school, but the incident received unusual attention for its brazenness and the proximity to more than a dozen children who were entering their school's playground as shots rang out.

Menino angrily vowed to find the shooters and posted plainclothes officers around the playground during recess yesterday.

''This isn't the Wild West; this is the city of Boston," the mayor told reporters in front of the school.

But after more than 300 shootings that have injured or killed people in the city already this year, residents of some scarred neighborhoods are starting to wonder.

''Instead of letting their children go places, they decide they're going to chaperone, or they're keeping their children inside the house," said the Rev. William J. Dickerson, pastor of Greater Love Tabernacle in Dorchester. ''It's very upsetting, to say the least. It's not something they're getting used to. I'm glad they're not getting used to it."

Christopher Sumner -- executive director of the Ten Point Coalition, which is credited with helping police tamp down Boston's violence in the 1990s -- said he is concerned about the apparent increase in violence in recent months. Thirty-six of the homicides have happened since July 1.

This is the second consecutive year in which Boston's homicide count has risen, and it already matches the 66 in 2001 for the most in any year since 1995, when there were 96 homicides. Still, the total is far lower than the 152 homicides in 1990, during the worst of the city's gang violence. And Boston's homicide rate is lower than in many other big cities.

Forty-two of this year's 66 victims were shot to death. Thirty-five were age 25 or younger. And a majority of the killings of young men remain unsolved.

The killings of two older women, which shocked residents and community leaders, also remain unsolved. On May 26, 97-year-old Gerda Bissett was found beaten to death in her St. John Street home in Jamaica Plain. In South Boston, 68-year-old Jean Lampron was attacked on her way to work shortly after 5 a.m. on Oct. 13.

The proportion of homicide cases in which police have identified or arrested suspects this year is a little lower than last year, 30 percent, compared with 34 percent. Both those percentages, which police call the clearance rate, are far lower than the 53 percent average for 1994 through 2003.

The department, with a patrol force of about 1,300, is down some 200 patrol officers from five years ago. Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole said last month that she needs to restore those positions to help stem the rising tide of crime.

Menino said that while he is trying to increase the department's staffing, he needs the public to step up.

''Somebody who knows there's a gun out there; they have to help us," he said. ''I understand their fear, but . . . you can't be a bystander. You have to be part of the solution."

Maria Cramer and Charles Radin of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com; Donovan Slack at dslack@globe.com.