19-year-old, minor arraigned on shooting charges

A 19-year-old man and a boy have been arraigned on charges that they fired a gun at two people sitting in a car outside a public housing activities and administration building in Somerville in February.

“In this case the victims, who had no known connection to the defendants, were not struck, but could have very easily been injured or killed,” Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said in a statement. “This type of intentional discharge of weapons without any regard for public safety is putting neighbors, people’s homes and the entire community at risk.”

Amanual Beshah, 19 of Malden, and the juvenile were arraigned this week on two counts of armed assault to murder, attempted assault and battery with a firearm and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building. The boy was also charged with carrying a firearm and carrying a loaded firearm.

Somerville police responded to the Mystic Activity Center, which provides community and residential administration services for the Somerville Housing Authority community, on Mystic

Avenue for a report of shots fired at around 2:45 a.m., on Feb. 20.

At the scene, police say they found a man in his 30s and a woman in her 20s who told police they had been seated in a parked vehicle when they saw “several males” walking toward them, according to a statement from the DA’s office. The males allegedly opened fire on the vehicle at close range, striking it several times but failing to strike either occupant.

The males then allegedly fled the scene, but police say that surveillance footage and forensic evidence pointed investigators to Beshah and the boy.

Police then executed a search of a residence in Belmont allegedly connected to one or both suspects and claim they found a 9 mm handgun there.

“We have been seeing a dangerous uptick in gun violence among young people,” DA Ryan said in her statement.

In neighboring Boston, police and authorities have been dealing with a string of violent acts allegedly perpetrated by children as young as 11, which puts them below the 12-year-old floor for arrest and prosecution established by state 2018 criminal reform legislation.