Hub shootings leave 2 men dead, 3 injured
Incidents in Roxbury, Dorchester prompt school lockdowns
Three shootings in Boston yesterday — two of them in broad daylight — left two men dead and three people wounded, prompting lockdowns at nearby schools.
It began at 1:46 p.m., when officers on foot patrol in Roxbury heard gunfire coming from the area of the Whittier Street Apartments, near police headquarters.
On Whittier Street, officers found a man suffering from gunshot wounds, police said. He was rushed to an area hospital, where he died of his injuries.
Sandy Wilcox said the victim was her 22-year-old nephew, Alex, but she declined to give his last name.
“He was just visiting,” Wilcox said. “My daughter was getting out of the car with him, getting ready to come in here.”
A 71-year-old man who happened to be looking out his window prior to the shooting said he saw the victim throw something out of a BMW in the parking lot.
About the same time, two men — one in a red hoodie — walked by the car from the direction of Ruggles Street and spotted the victim, said the eyewitness, who, like other neighbors, asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution.
The two men walked several feet away, then “tiptoed” back to the BMW, he said.
“One went on one side of the car, the other went on the opposite side, and each one fired two shots into the car,” the witness said. “Then they ran back in the direction they came from, toward Ruggles Street.”
A few seconds later, he said, the victim got out of the car and ran.
“He was stumbling as he was running,” the witness said, “and then he collapsed onto the grass.”
A 74-year-old neighbor said the four shots prompted her to run to her window.
“All I saw was a girl screaming and a guy lying on the ground,” she said. “He wasn’t moving.”
The girl was begging first responders, “Hurry! Save my cousin,” a 57-year-old woman said.
“After that, I saw a woman running up Whittier Street, yelling, ‘That’s my son, that’s my son!’ ” she said. “I was sitting here, crying, because I could see he was so young and his family was so desperate.”
Less than 30 minutes later and only miles away, shots rang out in a Burger King parking lot, wounding two men in their early 20s near Columbia Road and Washington Street in Dorchester, police said. One man was critically wounded and later died. The other man’s injuries were not considered life-threatening.
A witness who asked to remain anonymous said he heard 13 shots from what sounded like two different guns.
Four schools — two near each of the two shooting scenes — were close to being let out at the time. But their dismissals were delayed, and the schools were briefly placed in “safe mode,” meaning no one could go in or out.
Then, at about 7:15 p.m., two men were shot on Warren Street in Roxbury, police said. One man was hit in the arm; the other was found blocks away on Harold Street, sitting in a Jeep and bleeding from wounds to the arm and leg. Both men were hospitalized for nonlife-threatening injuries.