Homicide victim is identified as Roxbury man

Boston police yesterday identified a 21-year-old from Roxbury as the man found shot to death in Dorchester Saturday afternoon.

Ruth Rollins said that she reported her son, Warren Daniel Hairston, missing last week after he failed to come home. Police have made no arrests in his killing.

Rollins said her son was friends with several youths from the H-Block gang in Roxbury, including Jahmol A. Norfleet, 20, who helped lead a cease-fire between H-Block and a rival gang, Heath Street, in the months before he was gunned down in November. Police arrested an Everett teenager last month, saying that two guns found in a car he was driving were linked to Norfleet's shooting, but have not made an arrest in the homicide.

Hairston, who was the father of a 2-year-old girl, was released from jail the day Norfleet was killed, Rollins said. She said she has heard rumors suggesting her son was a suspect in Norfleet's killing, but she does not believe them.

Like Norfleet, Rollins said, her son was tired of burying friends. "He wanted this to end," Rollins said.

She said he had had run-ins with the law and had recently been released from prison after serving time on motor vehicle violations, but had decided to turn his life around.

She said she took him on a cruise to Aruba earlier this month, a trip which seemed to cement his desire to change.

"He did not want to come back," she said.

Leonard Lee, Hairston's uncle, said he was working with Hairston on another truce effort after Norfleet's death.

"He was caught up into that whole world and understood he needed to come out of it," Lee said. "What we were putting together was real."

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.