Concern about gangs pervades arraignment in killing

Police, others work to avert any retaliation

As a 23-year-old reputed gang member stood in a tense courtroom yesterday, charged with killing a rival, Boston police officers patrolled their neighborhoods in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, trying to prevent any retaliatory gunfire.

Christopher Jamison, a slight Roxbury man with a long criminal record, was arraigned yesterday in the fatal shooting Tuesday afternoon of 22-year-old Anthony Perry on a busy Jamaica Plain street.

Perry's killing has threatened a truce that law enforcement officials, ministers, and community workers managed to arrange between the two gangs in July 2006. Yesterday, those involved with the truce were calling gang members and friends of the victim and of the defendant to keep tempers calm. Until Tuesday's violence, there had been no killings involving the gangs since November 2006, when Jahmol Norfleet, a former gang leader and one of the pillars of the cease-fire, was fatally shot.

"I just think it was senseless and it really needs to be stopped," said Perry's father, Anthony L., who said his son was trying to leave behind the streets to focus on his two children, a 7-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl, and on getting his commercial driver's license.

At least a dozen of Perry's relatives and friends sat in the courtroom yesterday, some holding hands or with their heads down. Most, however, glared at Jamison, who stood behind a glass partition next to 19-year-old Shaba Olukoga, who is charged with being an accessory.

Several officers, including members of the gang unit and the department's tactical team, stood in the courtroom, watching for trouble.

Relatives and friends on both sides stayed calm as a courtroom clerk entered not guilty pleas on behalf of Jamison and Olukoga. Jamison was ordered held without bail and Olukoga was held on $250,000 cash bail.

"He was a pretty good kid," Perry's father said in a telephone interview after the arraignment. "A loving father. He's going to be missed by a lot of people."

In 2005, Perry was sentenced to 18 months for possession of cocaine and a firearm, but his father said that in recent months his son had been meeting regularly with his probation officer and trying to stay out of trouble.

The Rev. Jeffrey Brown, executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, whose ministers have worked on truces, described Perry as a charismatic man who had been trying on his own to defuse intergang disputes.

"He'd go to the place where the guys were hanging out and he would talk to them," Brown said. "He was on his way, doing what he was supposed to be doing. It's just a frustrating thing, I'm telling you. He was trying to get it right, absolutely."

At about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Perry was walking down Centre Street, in a bustling neighborhood close to the Bromley-Heath housing development. Police have associated Perry with a gang from that neighborhood.

Jamison, whom police have linked to Perry's rival gang in Roxbury, was driving a Pontiac carrying three other people, including Olukoga, according to prosecutors. Near Walden Street, Jamison got out of the car and fired at Perry several times, hitting him in the head, said Daniel Mulhern, a Suffolk assistant district attorney. Jamison then got back in the car, and Olukoga, who had climbed into the front seat, drove away from the scene, Mulhern said.

Mulhern did not describe a motive for the shooting. The gun has not been recovered.

Olukoga's lawyer, Carla Barrett, described her client as a motivated man who volunteers at a Beacon Hill church and wants to be an accountant.

John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com