Roxbury neighborhood rattled as shots ring out once again
For the most part, things were quiet on Copeland Street yesterday, but hardly normal.
In the aftermath of a 6-yearold getting wounded in a shooting Sunday night, a media posse descended on the Roxbury street where we politely, but firmly, pointed cameras and notebooks at residents, hoping they might offer some perspective on the insanity.
Late yesterday afternoon, a mother bringing her little boy home from school had no choice but to walk over the fresh bloodstain on the pavement close to her front stairs.
“Yes, I heard the ‘ pop, pop, pop …’ last night,” she said. “It was right under my window. I could hear every shot.”
The boy with curly hair and dark exuberant eyes broke free of his mother’s grasp for just a moment to add, “When I hear those pops, they always make me nervous, so I can’t go to sleep.”
“That’s enough,” the mother said, pointing her child toward the open door. “We have to go now, thank you.”
Not very far from that bloodstain on the sidewalk, there is a lovely park on Copeland Street known as Little Scobie Playground. It is an idyllic spot nestled among threedeckers that are, for the most part, well-maintained.
“My children love this spot,” said the young mother who asked that only her first name, Andrea, be used.
“What happened (Sunday) night is very worrisome,” Andrea said, “because generally the street and the park, in particular, has been a, kind of, oasis for the children around here. I mean, they really love this place.
“But at the same time,” she added, “you can’t help but think that it could have been my child, or any other mother’s child on the street. It shakes you.
“I grew up in public housing then moved to the South Shore before coming back to the city with my husband,” she said.
“There was a lot of crazy stuff going on when I grew up,” Andrea said, “but we were always taught to keep to ourselves, mind our own business and stay away from trouble. That’s what I did and that’s what I’m teaching my children to do,” she said, gazing at her children, Americo, 7, and his 2-yearold brother, Antonio, romping on a rope bridge.
A Boston public schoolteacher who lives near the playground and heard the gunshots Sunday night said, “My heart hit the floor, bounced to the ceiling and hit the floor again. You knew they were gunshots and that feeling was awful.”
It’s an old, sad and all too familiar story — a child paying for someone else’s sins. Only this time, God had his eyes on the innocent.