Latest slayings put Boston on pace to pass '05 rate

Five shooting deaths in the past week, including three over the weekend, have put Boston's homicide tally on pace to eclipse last year's total, the worst in a decade.

``It's just too fresh right now to talk about it," said a man who identified himself as the father of Antoine Perkins, 20, Boston's latest victim.

The man stood on the porch of his three-decker in Mattapan, where his son was killed and another victim was wounded but survived. On the porch, Antoine Perkins's 4-month-old son cooed as the victim's aunt held him.

Since July 19, five people have died from gunshot wounds.

Among them were Hilary Page Green, 20, of Dorchester, who was gunned down early Friday during a triple shooting outside Tara Pub on Dorchester Avenue. The other victims in the shooting are in critical condition, police said.

Also counted among the victims is Derek Williams, 19, of Dorchester, who succumbed to multiple wounds he sustained in March. Williams and Perkins were the city's 44th and 45th homicide victims of the year.

Last year, through yesterday , there were 41 homicides in Boston. The total of 75 last year was a 10-year high.

While the pace of killings appears to be quickening, the clearance rate for homicide cases is lagging, figures show.

This year 12 homicides have been solved, compared with 13 in 2005. No arrests have been made in the killings that took place in the past week.

With killings escalating, police last week identified five spots in the city where the bulk of shootings have occurred. One of those areas, near Morton Street and Blue Hill Avenue, has been the scene of at least five shootings since July 18, when a man was shot in the head but survived.

The next day, Gardy Joseph, 32, was shot to death two blocks away, in front of a white three-decker on Woolson Street where he grew up. Then, on Saturday, Perkins was shot about two blocks south of the Morton Street-Blue Hill Avenue crossing.

Perkins was shot on the night that a 20-year-old South End mother, Analicia Perry, was gunned down in Roxbury as she visited the site where her brother, Robert Perry, was shot to death four years ago. She had just dropped off her child with her sister, then walked to Albert Street to memorialize her brother.

As she set candles in the rear of 39 Annunciation Road, she was shot in the face, friends and neighbors said.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday called that killing and the wave of violence appalling. ``For someone to kill a person visiting a memorial, it's just unthinkable. That just hit us right in the heart," he said after announcing during a press conference in Roxbury that 24 faith- and community-based organizations will share $240,000 in state grants for summer youth programs.

``I don't have all the answers, but we will continue our efforts to combat crime," he said.

About 50 teens attended the press conference, held at the community YMCA.

Frank Young, 17, of Roxbury talked about the Analicia Perry's slaying . ``Somebody just popped her while she was kneeling down. Who would do something like that? It's not right," he said.

Perry's mother, Charline Perry, sitting in another daughter's home in Dorchester yesterday, said, ``I don't understand the violence." She said she will raise her granddaughter.

At the press conference, the Rev. Ray Hammond of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, a grant recipient, called for the violence to stop. ``Our destiny is not to worry about whether we will live past the age of 18, and it's not for parents to bury their children," he said.