JACKSON BASHES WALSH OVER HUB VIOLENT CRIME
Boston’s top cop is crediting his officers’ tireless work in helping crack two high-profile cases — including a teen’s brazen daylight shooting on Blue Hill Avenue — but mayoral challenger Tito Jackson is using the crimes to slam Mayor Martin J. Walsh over the city’s recent uptick in violence.
Surveillance video played crucial roles in leading police to murder suspect Khamonie McCallop, 18, of Roxbury, and home invasion defendant Cesar Lara Aguasvivas, both for crimes committed Thursday.
Jackson called the mayor “flat-footed” in his response. He also posted a video on Facebook touting that message.
“Why is the mayor calling a summit on violence in the middle of the summer versus prior to the summer? ... That’s absolute mismanagement and lack of planning by the mayor of a major city,” the city councilor said on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show yesterday.
But police Commissioner William B. Evans lauded “a lot of hard work” by his detectives, as well as “some cooperation” by the public in cracking the two cases in the midst of an already busy summer.
“It’s been busy, but we’re on top of it,” Evans told the Herald. “It’s good to close out some of these cases quickly. I think we have one of the safest cities in America. Hopefully, we have a peaceful, quiet rest of the summer.”
McCallop pleaded not guilty yesterday to the fatal shooting of Christopher Menard, 17, on Blue Hill Avenue and Cheney Street. McCallop was held without bail. Evans said the slaying is believed to be “gang-related.”
A 14-year-old walking with Menard was also struck in the foot after eight rounds were fired from a .45-caliber gun during the early evening shooting on a crowded thoroughfare in daylight.
Prosecutor Craig Iannini said a “large amount of video” was recovered that linked McCallop to the slaying.
“As they walk toward each other, the defendant pulls out a gun and fires. ... One of them hitting the victim, one of them apparently striking the minor with the defendant, in the foot.”
Iannini said the gun was later found in a blue trash bin near the crime scene. It was forensically tested and matched spent shell casings at the scene.
In the Hyde Park home invasion case, Aguasvivas was held on $1 million bail yesterday on charges of home invasion, kidnapping, assault and motor vehicle theft.
In that case, authorities said Aquasvivas’ mother identified her son in surveillance video, leading police to the 23-year-old suspect who they say broke into a home on Beaver Street in Hyde Park in the middle of the night with three others to brutally beat, kidnap and rob a woman inside. Police said the men hit the 65-year-old woman in the face with a handgun while they ransacked the home.
The four then forced the woman into her Kia Soul and drove it to a nearby bank to have her withdraw $400, which they took. The Kia was trailed by a white sedan, the woman told police.
The woman was pushed out of her car at the New Calvary Cemetery. She waved down a passing driver who called police. Police pulled fingerprints from the windows opened during the home invasion and they gathered surveillance footage from the ATM from which the suspects forced her to withdraw money.
The Herald was first to report a nearly 30 percent spike in nonfatal shootings citywide. Slayings are also slightly up, 25 this year through the early evening yesterday, compared to 23 homicides through July 11, 2016.
Jackson also hammered Walsh by saying he has only added 200 summer jobs for the city’s youth.
Walsh responded, “We’ve created ... more summer jobs than any other period in the history of the city. Violent crime is down 9 percent. We are not running and hiding from the fact that we’ve had an uptick in shootings. But we’re not running from the fact that we’re going to address this head-on.”