By Michele McPhee
Boston Herald Police Bureau Chief
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Quintessa Blackwell was the first woman to fall, the 18-year-old with a smile as bright as the future that was snuffed out with a bullet meant for a teen she was walking with in Dorchester on a March day.
Then, just weeks later, Chiara Levin - a 22-year-old tourist attending an after-hours party on a hot-spot block not far from where Blackwell fell - was in a car sprayed indiscriminately with gunfire squeezed off by reputed gang members.
Now an aspiring teacher and Salem State College student, T’Shana Francis, 21, has been assassinated by two gunmen who fired wildly into a crowd of friends standing on a corner in Mattapan.
The number of women being hit by bullets on city streets is actually statistically down, according to Boston Police statistics. This year, four women have been shot dead and another 13 were wounded by bullets.
But three of those dead women were murdered by bullets that were apparently meant for other victims.
Blackwell was walking with a group that included a teen suspected of being involved in an earlier shooting. Levin was in a car with reputed Cape Verdean gang players who got into an altercation at the after-party. Francis was standing with a reputed member of the Junior Chaos gang, which has been engaged in ongoing gun battles with rival ruffians, when she was hit by at least four shots.
“It’s very troubling and frightening to us. There doesn’t seem to be rules anymore,” Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview with the Herald. “It was once rare to hear of shootings involving women and children, and even the worst offenders knew you couldn’t shoot into a crowd.
“People in the community have to start holding people accountable.”
Earlier this month, a young mother, Latoya Johnson, 23, was hit in the neck by a stray shot fired into a Dorchester Burger King parking lot on a hot summer night. That victim’s cousin, Monique Taylor, has sadly grown accustomed to violence - her daughter’s father was murdered and another cousin was gunned down - but she said she has never seen such a blatant disrespect for innocent bystanders.
“I never heard of this, people shooting around women and babies,” Taylor said. “It’s crazy.”
Neither has Keith Richardson, 42. His younger brother Kevin Richardson, 41, was one of three men hit by the fusillade of bullets fired by two different guns that killed Francis this week.
“There is no chivalry in violence,” Richardson said. “And it’s worse now than ever.”
Even Boston Police said the savagery of the misfired bullets seems unprecedented.
“There was once a code of conduct among combatants to keep women and children out of the line of fire. Now there is a total disregard for life, period,” said Tom Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association.
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