4 slain in Dorchester house
Victims found in basement in city's deadliest shooting since '91
Four people were shot dead in a startling attack inside the basement of a Dorchester house last night.
It appeared to be Boston's deadliest shooting since the execution-style murder of five people in an underground Chinatown gambling parlor in 1991.
Boston Police Superintendent Bobbie Johnson said the shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. on Bourneside Street, which is near Fields Corner. Police who responded found four men in their late teens to early 20s. Three were dead. The fourth, a 21-year-old suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, was taken to Boston Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead, according to police.
Police stressed that the gunfire erupted inside the home and that the attack did not appear random. Police said they received preliminary reports of a heavy-set male leaving the house after the shooting, but said they didn't have enough details to put out a description.
''Generally speaking, when a homicide is indoors, it's not a random incident," Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole said late last night. ''But it's too early to speculate what the motive is."
Police did not release the identities the victims or other details.
The deaths brought the city's homicide total this year to 71, the most since 1995, and reignited anger and concern among residents about the wave of violence.
''This is crazy," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who lives adjacent to the house where the shootings occurred, on the street of spacious, well-kept homes a block from Dorchester Avenue. ''And it's going to get worse before it gets better."
Johnson said neighbors had seen young people often going in and out of the house where the shootings occurred. But neighbors had not complained to police about the foot traffic, because the young people were not excessively loud or troublemakers, he said. Johnson and neighbors said the eldest son of the family living in the home had some sort of music studio in the basement.
''I'd like to reiterate that this incident happened in the basement, not outside," Johnson told reporters at the scene late last night. ''Even if we had had 100 cops on the beat, we wouldn't have been able to prevent it."
A female neighbor who did not give her name said she heard a single gunshot and raced outside to see what had happened. Rivers, founder of the Ten Point Coalition, a group that helped curb Boston's gang violence in the 1990s, said that his daughter had heard a gunshot and a woman scream and was very upset about the incident. ''Boy that gave me a scare," he said.
Neighbors said the family had lived for some time in the house where the shooting occurred.
Tom Gannon, president of the Fields Corner Civic Group, went to the shooting scene. He said it's extremely unusual to have trouble on the street, which he described as part of the Melville Park area.
''I've lived here since 1955, and this isn't normal," he said. ''The biggest noise you usually hear in this neighborhood is kids over there across the street playing baseball and basketball and football in the park." 