Malden teen dies after shooting in Somerville apartment

A 16-year-old boy was shot inside a Somerville apartment yesterday and later died.

Somerville police said they were called to Farragut Avenue about 5 p.m. for a report of a person shot.

The boy, from Malden, had been shot in the chest, authorities said. He was taken to Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge where he was pronounced dead.

“The preliminary investigation into this matter suggests that the victim was in the residence with other individuals who were known to him and this was not a random act,” Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office said in a statement last night. “At this time no one has been charged in connection with this incident.”

A half-dozen or so of the victim’s friends arrived at the scene last night. One, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “I always thought of him as a good guy ... I knew him. He was always friendly.”

He said word spread through friends via text message and social media that their former classmate was dead.

“How could that happen,” he said. “He’s alive one minute and then he’s shot. It just made me think about how it can all go away, like that . ... He was a good guy. I never personally saw him be mean to anyone.”

He said the two used to go to the corner store and get pizza together and they talked basketball, players and coaches.

Jerry Kaplan, a speech pathologist at Boston University who lives next door to the home where the shooting happened, said an older woman lives there with her son and his two teenage boys.

Kaplan said he heard some yelling before the shooting.

“I was a little alarmed, but I wasn’t that alarmed,” he said. “I’ve heard that boisterousness in the past.”

He said he did not know the boy who was shot.

Another neighbor said of the street, located off Broadway near the Arlington town line, “It’s quiet. People are friendly to each other. It’s a nice street.”