BPD spends busy weekend unpacking heat
Cops seize 16 guns over three days
Boston police seized a staggering 16 guns from city streets over the weekend, a dozen of which were loaded.
“In covering these illegal guns, it’s safe to say they prevented many tragedies from occurring,” Boston Police Sgt. Detective John Boyle told the Herald.
Police collected nine handguns from just one suspect on Friday afternoon: The citywide drug unit teamed up with local FBI officers and Randolph police to raid the Dorchester apartment of a Omari Peterson, a 33-yearold wanted by the Feds.
After searching Peterson’s home with a warrant, officers said they found three loaded guns, bullets, and cocaine. The next day, Boston Police and FBI partnered with Quincy Police to obtain a search warrant and investigate a storage container where they reported finding six more guns, along with 30 rounds of ammunition and 92 strips of Suboxone.
Officers determined five of those guns had been reported stolen in New Hampshire. Peterson is now in Federal custody facing multiple charges, according to Boston Police.
But the raid was not an isolated incident. Boston Police seized two firearms during a traffic stop in Dorchester Friday afternoon, and another illegal gun during an investigation in the Back Bay Friday night.
Sunday was no day of rest for crime, as Boston Police responded to a dramatic gun-related incident in East Boston in the late afternoon. According to police and a witness account, 31-year-old Kii Hicks of Dorchester allegedly started a fight with an unnamed adult male. That man’s mother saw the altercation and rushed to “intercede.” Hicks then allegedly flashed a 9 mm handgun and pointed it at the woman and her son, police reported.
But during the action, Hicks dropped the gun. The mother quickly grabbed the weapon and ran up the street with her son, before police said another man, Remi Jones, of East Boston, attacked her and tried to wrestle the gun out of her grasp. This all transpired before police arrived on the scene, when they collected the gun from the woman and arrested Hicks and Jones on dangerous weapon charges.
“Her actions probably saved a couple lives,” Boyle said, but he strongly advocated citizens to call 911 or reach out to Boston Police’s crimestoppers unit if they know of an illegal gun.
Ruth Zakarin of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun violence said it’s critical that in these stressful times not just to seize illegal weapons, but find their origin.
“We already have so many guns in circulation,” she said. “One of the things we need to better understand is where those guns are coming from.”