Mayor vows to get to bottom of ‘uncharacteristic’ violence
Mayor Martin J. Walsh says the recent surge of violence and murders is “uncharacteristic for this time of year,” and he says he’s determined to get to the bottom of it.
Between last Thursday and early yesterday evening, there have been four homicides in the city, including two fatal daylight shootings within 30 minutes of each other last week in Roxbury and Dorchester. The shootings were not believed to be linked, police said.
“You don’t see this type of violence, generally, in January,” Walsh said of the gunplay. “That leads me to believe it’s not random. There’s something else going on.”
Walsh, speaking to reporters before yesterday’s 49th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, declined to discuss specifics of the spate of shootings.
“We’re going to be meeting in my office this week to see if we can find out what’s happening here,” he said. “We did something similar after the uptick in shootings in July and we saw a cool-off after that. We were able to work to reduce violence in our city.”
Boston police did not immediately respond to an email for comment.
The spate of fatal shootings began last Thursday and includes:
• Early afternoon shootings on Whittier Street in Roxbury that left a man in his 20s dead and a doubleshooting resulting in one fatality at a Burger King parking lot near Columbia Road and Washington Street in Dorchester;
• A double-shooting with one fatality in the Back Bay Saturday night near Boylston and Gloucester streets that left a man in his 20s dead;
• And a fatal shooting of an unidentified man about 6 p.m. Sunday near Washington and Kenwood streets in Dorchester.
Police had not announced any arrests, as of last night, in the slayings.