ALLEGED TEEN KILLER INDICTED
The gang member accused of gunning down a Boston teenager in broad daylight now has been indicted in his federal case, advancing those proceedings.
Csean “Shizz” Skerritt, 34, faces a federal charge of distribution of and possession with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl, the grand jury also gave the feds the goahead to seize anything he gained from his alleged drug-dealing.
This is an incremental change for the federal case against Skerritt, who the G-men already had charged by criminal complaint last month with the same count of dealing the powerful opioid fentanyl.
This moves the case along, as the feds need a grand-jury indictment to continue prosecution of any felony charge. He’d been charged by complaint last month, with an FBI agent filing an affidavit saying that Skerritt had sold about 55 grams of the drug to a confidential informant.
This case, however, isn’t really why the people of Boston have seen Skerritt’s face on the news various times over the past couple of months. Skerritt, a career criminal who’s been convicted of assorted offenses stretching back to his teenage years, is charged out of Suffolk District Attorney’s office with murdering 13-year-old Tyler Lawrence.
Prosecutors have said Lawrence, of Norwood, was visiting his grandparents in Mattapan and was out for a walk Sunday morning Jan. 29, listening to music, when Skerritt ran up and shot him to death before fleeing.
Authorities haven’t figured out why that allegedly happened — and indeed they’ve said we might never know. Prosecutors have said there was no connection between the two that they could find.
There’s no direct tie between the two cases in a legal sense, though cops arrested him first on the federal charges when they raided a Columbia Road home to catch him. At one point police said he’d been staying there, though Chelsea and North Attleboro have also been places he’s been said to live in.
Cops say the shooting happened three days before the drug deal that led to this federal case.
Skerritt, the feds say, is a member of the Morse Street gang, and has been for at least the past decade. Community sources have said Morse Street, named after a Four Corners-area side street, is a fairly small but violent outfit — and that he’s the member whose reputation for violence bolsters the crew.
His criminal history, according to the indictment, includes: a June 14, 2005 conviction in Middlesex Juvenile Court for assault and battery by means of a weapon, knife; a Sept. 15, 2008, conviction in Plymouth District Court for assault and battery on a public employee; a July 6, 2011, conviction in Suffolk Superior for possession of a firearm without a license; an Oct. 19, 2011 Boston Municipal Court conviction for assault and battery; and a Jan. 9, 2017, conviction in Suffolk Superior for possession of a firearm without a license, second offense. He beat a