Dot murder sparks fears of violent summer ahead
A murder Sunday night in Dorchester has residents fearing the start of another long, violent summer.
“It’s just going to get worse,” Sheilah Belin-Jones said outside her Devon Street apartment building, where the shooting took place. “You notice it happen, as soon as the weather starts breaking, the sirens start.”
Police responded to a report of a person shot at a neighboring apartment at about 10:20 p.m. BelinJones — who lives on the second floor with her husband and three children — said she saw nothing but she heard people fighting on the floor below, and then “two to four” gunshots.
“It’s very frightening. God forbid if it was a nice day and all the kids were outside playing,” she said, adding there is a family with teenage boys living on the third floor. “They tend to play in the yard a lot. God forbid if it was nice and we were all outside and this happened and the kids were running up and down and in and out of the house as they always do. They could have gotten in the crossfire.
“It makes you want to leave your community,” she added, choking up. “But you don’t want to throw in the towel.”
Police said they found a male victim in his 30s a block away on Stanwood Street suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. He was taken to Boston Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Authorities have not yet released the name of the victim or any suspect. They are appealing to the public to contact homicide detectives if they have any information.
Belin-Jones said the first floor was used as a rooming house and she does not know any of the people who live there. A Stanwood Street resident said she saw the man lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood from her second-floor window.
“Some mother is crying today,” the woman said from that same window, declining to identify herself. “I look out my window and see somebody’s child dead, I don’t want to live like that.”
The woman said she has nine children, two of whom live with her, and she would like to move.
Jorge Boves, who lives on Stanwood Street with his wife and 8-year-old daughter, said he has seen “a lot of shooting, a lot of stabbing, and I don’t see the action from police.
“I can only tell the government of Massachusetts, do something, do something,” Boves said.
“It’s just the beginning of the summer, it’s going to get worse,” said Alex Diaz, who lives on Devon Street. “In the winter you don’t see much, when the summer comes, that’s when you start getting the killings. It’s ridiculous.”