Four held hostage in alleged home invasion in Allston; 2 men arrested, charged after lengthy standoff
Four men were held hostage – including two who were ordered to lie on the kitchen floor for about two hours – after two armed men broke into an Allston home early Thursday morning, first identifying themselves as police officers and then demanding money and drugs, authorities said.
One of the victims was hospitalized for a cut to the head after being pistol-whipped, a Boston Police report said.
Police surrounded the home during a lengthy standoff before arresting the two alleged intruders.
Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, identified the suspects as Jacob Noseworthy, 29, of Allston and Sean Bowler, 24, of Waltham.
Both men have been charged with home invasion and witness intimidation. Noseworthy was also charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
The two men were each ordered to be held on $50,000 cash bail at their arraignment on Thursday, Wark said. A not guilty plea was automatically entered on their behalf. They are due back in court on May 30.
Wark said all of the victims are men in their mid-20s and residents of the home.
At about 3 a.m. Thursday, officers went to the house on Holman Street and saw one man – later identified as one of the alleged robbers – shut the front door, the police report said.
Boston Police officers then surrounded the home as the two alleged robbers ran around inside the two-story, two-family home and trying to open windows and doors, in apparent attempts to escape, the report said.
One of the suspects tried to leave out the basement door. An officer pointed a gun at the man and ordered him to the ground, but the man refused. The officer and suspect got into a “violent struggle” and they both fell to the ground, according to the report. Another officer helped pin and arrest the man.
The suspect suffered a cut on his forehead that needed several stitches, the report said.
Soon after a man – later identified as a victim – walked out a back door of the home and was ordered by officers to put his hands up and walk toward them backwards. He obeyed and was cuffed and put into a police cruiser, according to the report.
The other suspect continued to walk around the house, ducking to try to stay out of view.
Another man – later identified as a second victim – tried to jump out a front window of the house. Officers outside ordered him to walk out the front door with his hands up. He, too, obeyed and was cuffed and escorted away by officers, the report said.
About an hour later, two more victims escaped from the back door of the house.
Later, the second suspect walked out of the front door with his hands up, the report said.
The first victim to come out of the house told police he had been in his bedroom listening to music when he heard several loud bangs and someone yelling “Boston Police.” A man then entered his room and repeatedly yelled “give me the money” and “where is the weed?,” according to the report.
The victim replied: “We don’t have any.”
The two suspects then ordered the victim into the kitchen, to lay face down on the floor and to not look at the suspects. The suspects took the victim’s phone so he would not be able to call for help, the report said.
Soon after, the suspects saw the officers outside and began running around the house. After waiting for several minutes, the victim ran for the back door, where he was stopped by police, the report said.
The second victim he was sleeping in his bedroom when one of the suspects came in holding a silver handgun and began yelling “give me the money,” according to the report.
As the suspect threw things around the room, the victim said he told the suspect he did not know what he was talking about. The suspect then pistol-whipped the victim in the side of the head and told him to lay in his bed and pull a blanket over his face, the report said.
The victim said he laid in the bed until the man left the room and then later hid inside a closet. After a while, he left the closet, looked outside a window, saw officers and went outside. He was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton to be treated for a cut on his head, the report said.
The third victim told officers he was in his bedroom when he heard loud banging and someone yelling “where’s the money?” the report said. The victim was then told to go to the kitchen and lay on the floor with his face down. The victim laid there for about two hours alongside the fourth victim, who declined to talk to officers at the scene.
The second suspect apologized to the two victims. They then got up and left.
Police found a bag of marijuana and a cell phone inside a black Jeep Liberty parked in the driveway. The vehicle was towed away and seized as evidence, the report said.
E-mail Matt Rocheleau at mjrochele@gmail.com.
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Local mothers invited to "Mom's Nite Out" event at Arsenal Mall in Watertown
Locals who want to celebrate Mother's Day next week are invited to the Arsenal Mall in Watertown's national "Mom's Nite Out" event on Thursday, which features an evening of free pampering, food, and giveaways, according to organizers.
The event, which will run from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on May 9 near Old Navy, will also feature beauty advice and makeovers, fragrance samples, fitness demonstrations, food and drink tasting, shopping discounts, a prize giveaway, and more, organizers said.
The first 100 moms who register at the event will also be given free "swag bags" filled with goodies.
For more information on the event, visit the mall's Facebook or Twitter.
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Jaclyn Reiss can be reached at jaclyn.reiss@globe.com
Spring is in the muggy, fetid air on the MBTA
Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com
The setting sun shone down as an outbound Orange Line train approached Roxbury Crossing.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.
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Girl Scout from Allston sells 3,100 boxes of cookies – the most among 41,000 Girl Scouts in Eastern Mass.
(Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts)
Samantha Dorgan of Allston.
Samantha Dorgan of Allston sold 3,100 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, making her the top seller of the year out of 41,000 Girl Scouts in eastern Massachusetts.
“With the money Samantha earned from selling cookies, her troop will go camping, horseback riding, rock climbing and are in the process of planning a larger trip,” said an announcement from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts.
“The Girl Scout Cookie program allows girls to set goals, learn money management, and develop marketing skills,” the announcement said. “The activity of selling cookies is directly related to the organization’s purpose of helping all Girl Scouts realize their full potential and become strong, confident and resourceful citizens. Girl Scout troops use proceeds from selling cookies to fund service projects or plan an exciting trip.”
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City to install bike lanes along Market Street, Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton
The city plans to install bike lanes and markings that designate shared bike and vehicle use along Market Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton this spring, officials said.
The markings will stretch for about one and a half miles. They will run from the intersection of Chestnut Hill and Commonwealth avenues through the intersection of Chestnut Hill Ave. and Washington Street and onto Market Street until the intersection of Market St. and the Leo M. Birmingham Parkway, according to an announcement from the city’s Boston Bikes program.
Along with bike lanes and shared bike lanes, markings will be installed for “bike boxes,” which are designated areas at signalized intersections that provide cyclists “with a safe and visible way” to get ahead of queuing traffic if there is a red light.
Officials said the bike lanes are being designed in conjunction with the New Balance’s massive development project along Guest Street, which branches off Market Street.
“These bike facilities are designed in conjunction with the New Balance project in Brighton,” the announcement said. “The facilities on Market Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue will connect into the existing and planned bike network that is rapidly developing in the Allston and Brighton neighborhoods.”
The announcement said the new markings will improve safety by: providing guidance for vehicles to pass cyclists; reducing the number of cyclists on the sidewalk; encouraging motorists to drive slower; encouraging cyclists to ride more “respectfully and predictably” and make pedestrians and drivers more aware of cyclists.
The announcement said the markings will be installed this spring, but did not specify further.
Officials said such work is usually done over the course of one to three days.
The new markings will not cause an increase in traffic, nor will it lead to the removal of any parking spaces, according to the announcement.
E-mail Matt Rocheleau at mjrochele@gmail.com.
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Boston's New Urban Mechanics initiative named one of top 25 in nation by Harvard
Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com
Downtown Boston.
A City of Boston initiative has been named one of the top government innovations in the country by an institute at Harvard University.
The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is among 25 semifinalists for the Innovations in American Government Award, presented by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
“These top 25 innovations in government offer real, tangible ways to protect our most disadvantaged citizens, educate the next-generation workforce, and utilize data analytics to enhance government performance,” Stephen Goldsmith, director of the center’s Innovations in Government program, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Despite diminishing resources, these government programs have developed model innovations that other struggling agencies should be inspired to replicate and adapt to their own communities,” Goldsmith said.
The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics works to deliver an array of transformative city services to residents, ranging from enhancing public spaces, to increasing civic participation, to improving educational outcomes, according to Harvard.
The 25 initiatives were selected by a panel of researchers, practitioners, and policy specialists, Harvard said. The Innovations in American Government Award winner and four finalists will be announced in the fall.
In the list released Wednesday, the programs are presented in alphabetical order and are not ranked.
The Ford Foundation created the award in 1985 to draw attention to effective government programs, Harvard said. The awards program has since recognized more than 400 government initiatives at the local, state and federal level, as well as tribal governments, and provided more than $22 million in grants to support efforts to help disseminate those programs.
A full list of the Top 25 programs is available here.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.
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Video | MBTA takes steps to boost safety, security throughout system
(Matt Rocheleau for Boston.com)
The temporary extra patrols of well-armed police officers and soldiers in MBTA stations are gone. But the quest to bolster the long-term safety of the public transit system is far from over.
The T still has $80 million in unspent federal homeland security grants, which have been doled to public transportation systems across the country since 2002.
The $60 million in federal grants spent by the T over the past decade has helped make the agency a national leader in the industry of public transit safety.
“The efforts toward security and policing that the MBTA has had in place for a number of years have really been looked at as a benchmark for the industry,” said Greg Hull, director of operations, safety and security for the American Public Transportation Association.
And, when the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon two weeks ago, officials at the MBTA said that, while shocked and devastated like the rest of the city, they were prepared, largely due to the new equipment and training acquired in recent years.
“It was controlled chaos,” said Randy Clarke, senior director of security and emergency management for the MBTA and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
He described the atmosphere of the T’s central hub for dispatch and communications, or Operations Control Center, as officials scrambled to secure stations and stop some service after the explosions at Copley Square, and then again several day later when the system was shut down during a lengthy manhunt.
“I hate to say we’re used to crises and trained for them, but we are,” Clarke said.
On Monday, two weeks after the Marathon bombings, MBTA officials gave a tour of the control center, which includes some of the transit industry’s most sophisticated technology for daily operations and security.
FULL ENTRYSome pay phones in Boston to offer free Wi-Fi Internet hotspots this summer
Free Wi-Fi Internet access will soon be broadcast from 16 existing pay phones in Boston.
And officials from companies leading the effort hope to, pending city approval, rapidly expand the service so that a total of about 100 existing pay phones across Boston will offer free wireless Internet hotspots by the end of this summer. By the end of next summer, they hope they will have reached a total of about 400 payphones citywide.
The effort, called “FreeBostonWiFi,” is being carried out on a trial basis, company officials said.
So far, the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology has approved Wi-Fi installations at 16 pay phones, located around City Hall, Faneuil Hall, Downtown Crossing and Long Wharf, according to Tyler Kratz, president of DAS Communications, which is one of four private companies partnering on the effort.
RCN Business Services, LCC International Inc., Pacific Telemanagement Services and DAS Communications announced their plan at a conference in Boston last week.
Four temporary demo sites were set up at pay phones near the Hyatt Regency hotel where the conference was held, the companies said.
One site at Cambridge and Court streets near City Hall Plaza was heavily used even though nothing was done at the site to advertise that the Wi-Fi signal was there.
“People had no idea it was there unless they saw it on their phone,” or other mobile device, said Kratz. “People were using it quite a bit. It blew my mind.”
Over about a 24-hour span last week, about 18,000 mobile devices “noticed” the Wi-Fi. About 2,000 devices connected and more than 200 people spent and average of 17 minutes using the Internet connection, he said.
“There’s a demand for this,” said Kratz.
He said the Wi-Fi service at that payphone by City Hall was supposed to be permanent. But, last week it was struck by some bad luck. A vehicle rammed into and damaged the booth. But, Kratz said the companies plan to have it replaced and restore Wi-Fi service within a couple of weeks.
The other 15 pay phones in line to get Internet hotspots are also located in downtown Boston and in areas that draw a high number of pedestrians, including commuters, business professionals and tourists.
Kratz said another focus will be to add the service to pay phones in low-income areas of Boston where some people cannot afford their own Internet access.
“Boston is a great city. With all of the college students and the young people it’s perfect demographically,” he said. “And we really want to make sure this is not just clustered in one spot.”
The Wi-Fi hotspots will offer around-the-clock Internet access for an unlimited amount of time at no cost to users or taxpayers.
The signal is usually accessible within 100 to 200 feet of the kiosk, though range can vary depending on whether there are objects or structures around the kiosk that could interfere with the signal.
To connect to the Wi-Fi hotspots, users need to select FreeBostonWiFiSSID on their mobile device and then accept the connection’s terms and conditions. No password is needed and no personal information gathered.
The companies that own the kiosks and run the service pay for installing and maintaining the new infrastructure at the payphone stations.
Some of the kiosks themselves have advertisements on them to generate revenue for the companies, but Kratz said the Internet service will not display ads on users devices.
"The partnership is giving new life to telephone booths that have almost become extinct due to the evolution of the cell phone," said a statement from Jeff Carlson, vice president and general manager of RCN Boston. “Small cell and Wi-Fi technology deployed through this partnership is another step toward delivering high quality wireless by lighting up hotspots in Boston using RCN's unparalleled fiber network."
The payphone kiosks will broadcast Wi-Fi in part by using small cell technology, which allows mobile devices, such as cell phones, to work.
"It's interesting and a little ironic that capacity demands from the cellular market has allowed for the repurposing of existing phone infrastructure, like payphone kiosks,” said a statement from E.J. von Schaumburg , vice president of Advanced Mobility Solutions at LCC International. “Utilizing small cell technology, we can take advantage of the excellent kiosk locations throughout an urban area and deliver high quality cellular capacity at the street level."
Last summer, a pilot program launched in New York City in which free public Wi-Fi Internet hotspots were emitted from routers installed at about 10 payphones.
Kratz said his company has been involved with the efforts in New York City and that his company now runs Wi-Fi from about 20 payphones there and plans to soon add the service to about 40 more payphones.
City officials in New York have said they plan to have Internet service added to all 12,000 payphones there.
Several weeks later after the program debuted in New York, two at-large City Councilors in Boston – Felix G. Arroyo and Ayanna Pressley – proposed doing something similar here.
Kratz said he has since met with Arroyo to discuss replicating the service in Boston and that he and other city officials have been instrumental in helping it launch.
Use of payphones has become rare because of cell phones. Some payphones no longer function to make calls. Others have been removed entirely.
Wi-Fi hotspots will help restore some use to the old payphone kiosks, officials have said.
The first-ever payphone was installed at a bank in Hartford in the late 1800s.
Since 1997, the number of payphones nationwide has dropped from an estimated peak of about 2.2 million to about 400,000, according to a petition that the American Public Communications Council, which advocates for payphone use, sent to the Federal Communications Commission last spring.
Kratz said the roughly 400 payphones in Boston his company hopes to bring Wi-Fi to are all owned by Pacific Telemanagement Services. He said there are few others in the city.
Kratz said his company is also in talks with city officials about the possibility of having free wireless Internet access broadcast from key municipal buildings, like police and fire stations, as well as from old-fashioned fire alarm boxes around Boston. But, Kratz said, no agreement has been reached and other companies are pitching similar ideas to the city.
E-mail Matt Rocheleau at mjrochele@gmail.com.
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Unbound Visual Arts to present 2 exhibits at Harvard Allston Ed Portal
The Unbound Visual Arts group will present two exhibits at the art gallery at Harvard Allston Education Portal on North Harvard Street during May and June.
The “Unlimited” exhibit will feature “sculptural artworks” and “interprets, explores and presents concepts related to ‘unlimited’ lives.
The exhibit was made by six members of the Boston Sculpture Gallery and curated by John Quatrale.
The “UVA Members Exhibit” features 50 artworks in a range of media.
That exhibit was made by 27 members of the group and curated by Ruth Rieffanaugh and Karen Smigliani.
An opening reception for both exhibits will be held from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on May 9.
The exhibits will be on display through June 30 and available on Fridays from 3 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.
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On Allston block where carjacking took place, neighbors say they saw nothing
On the block in Allston where a man said he was carjacked last Thursday night by the two alleged Marathon bombers, several landlords, business owners and employees said they do not know of any people or cameras that might have witnessed the carjacking.
Officials at the FBI declined to comment about what evidence has been collected and from where.
“We’ve obviously collecting thousands upon thousands of pieces of evidence and information,” said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI, declining to comment further on the investigation.
The carjacking happened at about 11 p.m. on April 18 in front of 60 Brighton Ave., the victim told the Globe in an exclusive interview this week.
Michael B. Moskow owns that residential building and another adjacent building at 64 Brighton, which sits at the corner of Brighton Avenue and Chester Street.
He said by phone Friday that neither he nor the buildings’ superintendent have been contacted by investigators. And he said he has not heard of any residents in the building who witnessed the carjacking.
“It sounds like it was a pretty quiet deal,” he said.
Officials for that realty company and another company that owns 56 Brighton said they do not believe there are any cameras on their property that would have been in a position to record any of the carjacking.
From 60 Brighton, the hijacked Mercedes SUV turned right onto the next cross street, Fordham Road, which is the corner where 56 Brighton sits.
At the time of the carjacking, the businesses on that block – an insurance agency in the basement the residential buildings, a realty office, a frozen yogurt shop and an auto parts store – were closed, employees said.
The workers said they, too, were not aware of any cameras that may have captured the incident or any people who witnessed it. They said they do not know of anyone who’s been contacted by investigators.
Still, the carjacking happened just three blocks from the heart of Allston Village and the neighborhood’s busiest intersection for nightlife.
On most Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Harvard and Brighton avenues are swarmed by crowds, including a large number of college students and young adults, headed to a number of popular bars and restaurants there.
E-mail Matt Rocheleau at mjrochele@gmail.com.
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