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City's latest murder victim: 8 years old
By adamg on Mon, 06/25/2007 - 10:00am
Update: Investigators now say a 7-year-old cousin playing with an illegal gun shot him, the Herald reports. See the comments for a statement from the DA.
Laquarrie Jefferson was shot to death shortly after 11 p.m. last night at 266 Seaver St., when three men burst into his apartment and opened fire.
"I am stunned and saddened by the news of Laquarrie's death," police Commissioner Ed Davis said. "His young life has been cut tragically short by senseless gun violence."
The Herald reports three men stormed the apartment, kicking open the door and opening fire.
The Globe has more.
In April, 2006, a 14-year-old girl was stabbed in a fight at the same address.
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Comments
Is it too much to ask?
Is it asking too much to check your facts before you write a freaking story? Same sad story, but where did it happen?
Herald says Dorchester, Globe says Roxbury… Universal Hub links it to Dorchester.....Yet the City of Boston shows it as Roxbury. Give us a break & stop dumping on Dorchester.
Boston Herald
Police probe gang link in 8-year-old boy’s murder
Boston police homicide detectives are taking a hard look at the family’s account surrounding last night’s tragic shooting death of an 8-year-old boy in his Dorchester home.
Boston Globe
Roxbury boy mortally wounded in shooting
By David Abel, Globe Staff  | June 25, 2007
An 8-year-old boy was shot in the abdomen and killed last night when three men walked up to the front door of his Roxbury home and began shooting, police said.
http://www.cityofboston.gov/default.asp
My Neighborhood
Neighborhood
You live at *** SEAVER ST in Roxbury (Ward 12, 7). Click here to view a Map.
Your neighborhood liaison for the Mayor's Office is Keith Williams.
Your trash pickup day is Monday & Thursday.
City Council
The City Councilor for District 7 is Chuck Turner
Never mind that ...
... The real story is that an 8-year-old kid is dead. Dumping on Dorchester? No, there's enough violent crime in Dorchester already that I don't have to pile on - I picked "Dorchester" by looking at where the building is on a Google Map.
Still, my apologies if I'm wrong. I admit I don't really know where the "border" is between Roxbury and Dorchester in that stretch just north of Franklin Park, so I stand to be corrected.
Personally, I'm wary of the whoami thing because it used to say our house is in Hyde Park, when it's really in Roslindale, although I noticed just now they've fixed it (in our case, that actually made a difference because it determined where we could send our daughter for school, back when the city was more strict about such things). I also don't pay much attention to what the BPDNews reports say, because those are based on police district lines, which don't always match up with neighborhood boundaries (for example, the police always refer to the Back Bay Hilton as being in the South End).
Little kid killed at home in Boston for no good reason
Is that better? It says what matters.
This neighborhood stuff is what helps fuel the whole "stop snitchin" business (known in a previous generation's white gang and drug ridden messes as "The Code of Silence").
It isn't "my neighborhood is better than yours" or even "not my neighborhood so not my problem" that matters. How about "this is my city damnit and this has to stop".
what are you doing to make it stop
Comments about a romanticized 'past' that never existed- way to go swirlygrrl. Are you even from here, originally? The issue of neighborhoods is so much more complicated than your pat response. As a Roxbury native- I can tell you what newcomers think when I say where I am from.
As for me- I have devoted 15 years of my life to survivors of violence- what are you doing besides blogging?
Not as much as I used to ...
When I had more time and wasn't supporting three other people, I did much more, I will admit that.
In the years when the city racked up 150+ homocides I was doing things like forming suburban/urban links of support for a Dudley Square church. I helped raise money and distribute food, provided transportation for people involved in outreach efforts for community building, coordinated youth exchanges, and shopped for a food pantry (there were very few large stores in the inner city back then). I also pointed people who needed jobs toward jobs in the Longwood Medical Area and MGH and provided numbers and addresses of the recruiting offices and specific directions and instructions. These jobs were usually entry level, but paid nearly $10 plus benefits and partner/child benefits - good money in the early 1990s. Most of these were also night shifts. I was later told by the mother of one young man who was putting his life back together after prison that the night shift work was keeping him out of trouble. Most of his former social circle slept all day and stayed out all night.
I do vividly remember one elder person who warned me that one shopping area was not safe after dark. Not because I'm female, but because I "might get caught in the crossfire". This place was on the border between Roxbury and Dorchester - so I'm not sure where it was. As if it mattered.
I'm hardly nostalgic for the Code of Silence days - I bike through Charlestown and have had no problems in nearly a year. I know people who lived near here twenty years ago and they wouldn't even sit near their windows on a summers evening back then.
p.s.
I also worked over by Mission Hill for four years - on Parker St. (Rox Crossing) and then in a building shared by an elder services agency. So yes, I am used to hearing all sorts of presumptive and bigoted crap thinly veiled by concern for my safety. Not that nothing ever happened (a coworker was assaulted and robbed at knifepoint on Tremont), but I do know what people say when they realize that you work in Roxbury.
I also know Roxbury as a big place, just like Dorchester, with huge geographic variations in any number of quality of life factors.
Of course people too fearful to get anywhere near the area would warn me about "that pregnant woman who was killed". I'd tell them not to worry - I never brought my husband to work with me.
young kids with guns
im hearing now that the story might be a bit more than "thre men bursting in and opening fire" the city is going crazy because the kids dont care any more.they have no respect for anyone or anything.this stems from generations of not having respect.
Yeah, the Globe and Herald raising the question
Globe: Police focus on family's story in fatal shooting of 8-year-old, source says.
Herald: Police probe gang link in 8-year-old boy’s murder:
Little Boy Lost
Pictures of Laquarrie Jefferson from boston.com:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gal...
I am most thankful that I need not fear that my own sons, scarcely older than Laquarrie, will be killed in their own home like this. I hope that mothers and fathers in his neighborhood will know a time when they need not fear, either.
No more investigation of three-gunmen theory
This just in from Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley on the latest theory that he died at the hand of his 7-year-old cousin:
stop snitching on 7 yr olds?
wow. so the parents lied to the police? is this part of a bigger problem? i understand that they were probably afraid and confused in the aftermath but to still lie after things start settling down? i wonder how all the children on that street who saw it all play out will be affected by this. will they lie to police because it is behavior they have witnessed? will they see the police as the guys who showed up and tried to save the little boy or as the guys who show up later to take the other little boy away? im not even going to get into why there was a gun lying around a bunch of 7 yr olds playing video games which im sure involved shooting and killing something. come on parents, take some responsibility for your children and the lives they live. they see what you do, how you act, who to respect and they mimic. teach your children well before it is too late
Can you really say that though?
I understand what you're saying about your kids not growing up in a neighborhood where they're frequently hearing of kids being killed and know a lot of people involved in gangs, but nowhere is immune. Kids get killed everywhere. Sure, there are more violent deaths in cities, but cities aren't the only places they can occur. I imagine it's not very comforting to hear that such things are rare in the suburbs when it's your kid who was killed.
Not at the Top of my Worry List
I don't think that it won't happen to my kids, particularly since there are groups of teens with varying appetites for various drugs and alcohol who party in the nearby woods(some were my husband's students and had drug and dealing issues as frosh). I wouldn't put it past one of these kids to pack heat if they could find it or felt they needed it, or try to rob a nearby house out of convenience.
Unlike homes I visited years ago when things were quite a lot worse, I don't fell like I need to move my kids' beds away from windows or barracade myself inside on a nice day because of crossfire issues and threats of home invasion. For that I am thankful.
I don't feel like I need to keep a loaded gun in the house for protection, either. Considering that I grew up around guns, I can't say that I would not resort to that if I felt it might come in handy. I am fortunate to no longer live any place where keeping a loaded gun around might be considered an understandable and rational act.
More on the family
The Globe runs down its history.
The Herald chronicles their problems, too.
The two papers can't agree on how to spell the poor kid's first name. The Globe says it's Liquarry; the Herald says that was the father's name but that the kid's name was LaQuarrie. Boston Police say Laquarrie.
Father and Son
According to the Herald, Liquarry is Laquarrie's Father.
Nothing like a little sensationalism...
From the Herald:
Violence in Boston plummeted to a new low as an 8-year-old Dorchester boy - beating the odds by thriving despite gang-linked violence surrounding him at home - fell victim to a fatal shooting, allegedly at the hands of a cousin who is even younger: just 7 years old
Beating the odds? What odds did he beat, exactly? Do a majority (or even a statistically significant percentage) of kids in his neighborhood or building or family get killed by gang-linked violence before age 8?
What I think they were trying to say ...
The odds he beat were not related to growing up in Roxbury (or Dorchester), but to growing up with parents with criminal records, who apparently didn't think anything of keeping loaded guns in the house.
But "new low"? Sadly, it is not, unless you have the memory of a gnat and can't remember that poor girl shot and paralyzed by a thug, or the pregnant woman who lost her baby when shot on the Orange Line or, well, you name it.
That's horrible!!
I still remember reading and hearing about both of those horrific incidents, and, as scary and horrible as both of those incidents were, the incident with the 3-year-old girl ending up permanently paralyzed as a result of a stray bullet from a thug's gun entering an apartment window and grazing the unfortunate girl, resulting in her permanent injury, is, in a way, even more scary, imo. This little girl's ability to lead a normal life, run and play like most children, and, to lead a normal life, just generally, was taken away from her when she'd just barely come into the world, and hadn't had the chance to really live.
I HONESTLY can't understand why the pro-gun people won't see
beyond all the propaganda that the NRA and the Gun Lobby throws around.