Family mourns slain teen
The older sister of a Chelsea teen gunned down Friday night said she learned what had happened after the 15-year-old failed to show up for dinner with the family.
“We usually go out to dinner and my mother was calling his cellphone,” Yuly Vasquez, 17, told reporters standing next to a vigil for her younger brother. “Someone in the ambulance answered. They said ‘ Jimmy just got shot, you have to come to the hospital.’”
The family was waiting at CHA Everett Hospital in Everett when a doctor walked in to deliver the heartbreaking news.
“We were in a conference room waiting for a couple of hours; we were thinking he was in surgery or something,” Vasquez said. “The doctor introduced himself and told my mom, ‘I’m sorry to say this, but your son is lost.’ My mom fell to her knees and was hysterically crying.”
Tearful relatives of Jimmy Vasquez, 15, gathered around the makeshift memorial yesterday morning, with 20 candles and five bouquets of flowers on the sidewalk at the corner of Shurtleff and Bellingham Streets in Chelsea. A sign had been placed on the outside brick wall of the building and friends and family left messages as Chelsea police officers watched nearby.
Yuly Vasquez said she believed her brother, the oldest boy among six children, may have been mixed up with the wrong crowd. But she said he was attending Chelsea High School, helping out around the house and trying to find a parttime job.
She said the family probably would have gone to a Chinese restaurant Friday night, down the street from the spot where her brother was murdered, where Jimmy liked the shrimp fried rice and boneless spare ribs.
Chelsea and state police detectives worked through the night Friday into yesterday and are looking for at least three suspects who are believed to have fled the scene in a light silver, 2010 Toyota Corolla, Chelsea police Chief Brian Kyes said.
Vasquez was hanging around outside on Shurtleff Street with several other teenagers at about 5:35 p.m. Friday when the car drove past them and pulled over a block away, Kyes said. Two people got out of the car wearing hooded sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up, and one of them opened fire into the crowd, Kyes said. Vasquez was mortally wounded after being struck in the stomach, and another 15-year-old was struck in the foot, the chief added.
“This does not appear to be random; they saw who they were after, whatever their motive was,” Kyes said. “It’s a busy street. To take out a gun, fire rounds, it’s crazy.”
Kyes said it’s unclear whether the incident is gang related and tips have been coming in. The chief said the shooting does not appear to be connected to the ongoing violence in East Boston, where six teens have been killed over the past 16 months in crimes with either confirmed or suspected gang ties.
There was one homicide in Chelsea in 2016 and none on the street, a fact Kyes attributes to the roughly 100 arrests of “highprofile” gang members during targeted and coordinated raids with state and federal officials last January and May.