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BU student found shot to death on Allston street
By adamg on Thu, 04/19/2012 - 11:41am
WBUR reports a male student was found with gunshot wounds on Allston Street across from Glenville Avenue around 2:30 a.m. and was pronounced dead at the scene. BU Today reports he was a student in the Graduate School of Management. Boston Police report he was 24.
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Comments
My neighborhood
Right across from my apartment, actually. That area isn't big with shootings, so this is surprising. My condolences to friends and family of the victim.
My wife's old neighborhood
I agree. Never a big spot for shootings. Ringer Park's iffiness has been discussed, but that's a different kind of shooting.
Condolences to the victim's family. It'll be interesting to see how BPD reacts. It's the first non gang-related shooting I've seen here in a while and the fact that a student is involved -- as is a relatively safe neighborhood -- should raise some eyebrows at the BPD.
If this killing
[float=right]
[/float]If this killing was done with a legal gun, I'd be surprised.
www.MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org has proposed Federal legislation that would help get illegal guns off the streets. Ask your Congressman, Senators and neighbors if they support it.
The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbies in the USA so we have a lot of work to do to get this passed. Scott brown says he opposes Federal legislation on this issue because "it is a local issue." Mayors Tom Menino and Mike Bloomberg and mayors from 625 cities in the USA disagree with Scott Brown.
FAQ
More laws are really
More laws are really effective against people that already don't follow them. This isn't a problem which can be legislated away and somehow I doubt your average street thug and drug dealer is writing checks to support the NRA either.
Mayor Menino, Mayor Bloomberg, over 600 other mayors and I
Mayor Menino, Mayor Bloomberg, over 600 other mayors and I have read the proposed laws and given this issue some thought. There's a BIG difference between an opinion and an informed opinion.
Somebodies gotta supply the weapons
The idea is to make tracking easier to find suppliers breaking the laws.
Nothing to do or go after legit gun owners and suppliers; but something needs to be done to make sure that guns aren't being laundered into the black market, and then into irresponsible hands.
Seems like common sense to me. But a lot of people will tell you guns should be as free as changing currency.
IOW give felons the right to arms, but make sure to take away their right to vote.
Isn't the thing that makes
Isn't the thing that makes the "black market" "black" that it's unsanctioned and unsupervised? And you honestly have no idea who committed this crime. You've not only made the leap from "irresponsible hands" to "felons" without explaining the connection to this or any other crime, you've also assumed that the gun was illegal and that more laws would have assuredly prevented this tragedy. That's a lot of assumptions, especially without any conclusive information about the crime.
This is no different from insisting we strip-search everybody and take away their aftershave at the airport.
It is a state and local
It is a state and local issue.
It's really disturbing that the first reaction to this tragedy is to call for surveillance cameras and tougher gun laws without any real information about the nature of the crime and thus no idea what might be reasonable approaches to deterrence or prevention.
Allston Is a Dangerous Place
While one could say that shootings in the area are rare, there are a HUGE number of muggings in the area, frequently with one or more of the criminals using a gun or threatening the use of.
Between the hours of 3PM and 6AM I would be wary going anywhere in Allston alone and I've lived here for the past 15 years, and prior to that several years in the late 80's/early 90s.
That may seem paranoid but the proximity to Fidelis Way, many [seen by muggers as] easy targets, and the fact that it only takes a minute on a semi-deserted block to get jumped or mugged...
Be careful around Allston, especially at night. I may despise the students for their transient and partying nature. But nobody deserves to be the victim of crime no matter how obnoxious or naive.
You're insane
Allston is no more dangerous than any other part of this city. In fact, it's probably significantly safer than a lot of Southie, Charlestown, East Boston, Somerville, etc.
Please tell me that you're geriatric and/or wheelchair-bound. Otherwise, you're just insane.
Granted, my first five years living in this city were spent living in Roxbury. Maybe I'm just made of tougher stuff than you are.
My neighborhood as well
I lived about 2 minutes worth of walk from this corner about 10 years ago, on the other side of the park on Gordon. Naturally, I always avoided the park. The worst thing I witnessed was an attempted thuggish-ruggish stabbing around the same spot on the other side of Comm. while walking home with a room-mate, and it was a crazy sports-related celebration night full of all kinds of mischief. The stabby folks were clearly *cough* not from the neighborhood. *wink wink*
It seems like this area, and extending up Comm Ave over the hill (where I also lived for years) has gone to shit over the past decade. I recall multiple armed robberies within earshot of a Whole Foods just last year.
What the fuck is happening here? I never used to feel uncomfortable walking around there late at night, but haven't really passed by at night in ~5 years. Is it the economy?
The BPD need to get their shit together in policing this area. All of the streets are dark, there are a shit-load of dark alleys, and apparently some think that these are good hunting grounds for jacking up vulnerable people. The fucking D-14 station is 2 minutes away on a straight-shot drive!
This is terrible, and I extend my condolences for the victim's family. This should not be happening on a corner I used proudly call my neighborhood.
Simply not true
Only, it hasn't. And you recall incorrectly. There was an armed robbery up on the Whole Foods side of Allston St. last year. There was a murder "up the hill" last year as well, which turned out to be domestic in nature.
Twenty-five years ago when I lived around the corner from the Kells over looking the parking lot of another of the bars in that area we had to call the police pretty much every weekend, and got very little response. In the fifteen years (gads, dating this stuff is making me feel old!) I've lived in Brighton (two blocks away from the previously mentioned Whole Foods) I've had to call the cops once, and they were there almost instantly. Muggings, while not heard of, are not common and usually of the un-armed type. We did have a rash of break-ins last summer. The area you describe as having "gone to shit" just simply has done no such thing.
A murder any where in the city is sad and unacceptable. This one is more notable because of how out-of-character it is for the area.
More than that
Not too long ago, there was a cabbie who was killed At Monastery and Washington. There was the guy from Allston and girl from NH killed in a drug deal gone bad at Kelton and Brainerd too (2006). In 2008, a guy was shot dead on Linden St.
In December, 2 guys were shot on Chester St again over a drug deal. They lived though.
In more recent years, we've been averaging about 1 murder or attempted murder per year.
And the 10 years prior to that?
Yes, crime happens in Brighton. We're in a city. What I object to is the claim that things have gotten worse. It hasn't.
One murder a year in Brighton
One murder a year in Brighton (not counting Allston) is far, far below the national rate per 100,000 (which is something like 467).
It's a very safe place.
.
.
Need help
Can anybody give more information about the victim. What is his name? Is he belongs to India? Please help us. We got a shocking news yesterday that Mr. K. Sheshadri, pursuing MS in mathematical finance, who is living at Allston Street found dead. Please help us in providing more information.
Angering
No one is sure yet of the details, but this is just another nail in the coffin of this garbage neighborhood. I'm a graduate student at BU and left a bar last night at 1:30--the Avenue, just about 3 minutes up Comm. Ave from this--and to think that this could have been me or my friend I was at the bar with is staggering.
It makes me angry that more than once I've felt unsafe walking around my own neighborhood. And this incident just reinforces that feeling.
Tragic story, and totally unacceptable to every decent, generally law-abiding person living in this area.
Dude...
...regrettably, you students have become targets. You simply have. There is no other group around who simultaneously believes they are freaking badasses - particularly when having been drinking - who then go and walk around tanked up and try to mingle with the dangerous marginal. You have no "presence" that might deter some thief.
That's not personal, that's simply an observation of you as a group: walking targets with attitude.
What?
Yes, it's only BU students who do stupid things in Boston. Never happens at any of the other dozens of collages.
Except that poor BC student who died after leaving a bar.
Except that drug shooting at Harvard.
Except that Wesley Girl who stabbed her ex-MIT boyfriend while he slept. Or all the binge drinking that MIT was previously so well known for.
Yup, every one of the 30,000+ BU students get tanked up and picks fights with guys with guns in Allston every single night.
Stop
Students outnumber locals 100:1 there. They lack control and discipline. They chronically mob the streets after hours, drunk, almost nightly. You think those comments were jokes?
Read the police beat see how many stupid antics are recorded there. Please don;t spin some myth about the students never causing anything or doing stupid things, please.
Jesus, it's understood you might "defend your own," but don't go spinning some yarn about how guileless and innocent students are.
Who are the "students"
The 10-15% that act like hooligans, and flunk out due to their inability to live away from home.
Or the other 85-90% doing no such thing?
Very upsetting
Someone got mugged on this street about a year ago. It's just a normal neighborhood/busy street, so this confuses me. I don't like walking down it after dark and now I am of course even more hesitant. Makes me so angry. I have been living in this neighborhood for 7 years while saving for a house and glad to be getting out this fall after this. It's gone downhill with the addition of some low income housing. Thank god The Kells is gone. What a bad element that brought in. The neighborhood has so many pros, but the cons lately are making me sad.
Somewhat surprising for that area
My condolences to the victim's friends and family as well.
This is somewhat surprising - yeah, I know, its a city and all, but I'm sure that most UHers realize that a fatal shooting really is kind of unusual for this area. I have warned friends and colleagues about the area around Glenville Ave. for some time, but it was more for fear of property crimes or, in what heretofore was considered the worst case, mugging.
I am exceedingly curious to hear even preliminary results of the BPD's investigation - I wonder if this was a mugging/break-in type situation that was terribly elevated, or whether there was something else going on.
Separate question - at which point does a stream of bad news start to really hurt BU (of course I am implicitly acknowledging that it really doesn't matter that a lot of the things that have gone down in the last few months have had little or nothing to do with the university, but since the media keeps attaching BU to the stories, I was just wondering whether and when it causes potential students (and their parents) to say "er, maybe not")?
Again, condolences to the victim's family. Another senseless crime.
Few years back
There were a couple of young kids (students?) that were executed in some drug deal gone bad in this area, right? I remember hearing about it, and a friend of mine who lived over there was very freaked out.
Bad block or two
I've always felt on high alert whenever I walked on Allston Street. Now I know why.
I try to avoid Allston between Harvard Ave and Allston Street, north of Commonwealth Avenue. There are too many shady men loitering for my comfort.
Two guesses
With being shot in both the leg and the head, I'm going to guess that he was being mugged and decided to fight back. The robber shot him in the leg during the struggle and then decided to leave no witness and shot him in the head.
My second guess would be that he knew his murderer and they got into a fight. Again, a gun is pulled and during the struggle he is shot in the leg followed by the head to kill him (again, leaving no witness).
Crime in that area is pretty much drug-related (drug use/theft) and property damage/vandalism for the most part.
What's really upsetting
Is the level of bigotry and racism this story seems to have revealed. Why don't we wait for the police to come up with some theories as to the nature of the crime before we get the pitchforks out and start running people out of town?
If...
...thirty years of close observation of the area, coupled with work with those on the margins is "bigotry and racism," then you have a mental issue and I advise you seek help.
Moreso, you apply those labels as easily as saying "peanuts," a literal reflex, to people who live there, and have done so their entire lives. You pontificate about these things, and you likely have no association with the area, save you're going to reside there a mere few years, and then leave forever.
Jesus. What the hell is the matter with people nowadays.
Now please. You as a student - and that's most likely who you are, who made this commentary - will shortly leave. We won't. These are our homes.
So try to listen to people in the know, instead of immediately shouting out your little knee-jerk tired screed about bigots and racism. You have no Goddamn idea what you're speaking of.
(Yes, I am pissed off at this sort of willful stupidity)
Thanks for playing
Please try again.
I've got at least 10 years of "observation" in and on the area on you.
Are we on the same page?
I just looked through all of the commentary here on UHub so far...did I miss something? Aren't you the first person to even mention race? The victim's race hasn't even been made public yet. I'm not even sure I see the bigotry you're suggesting is present at some worrying "level". I think there's one comment on the addition of low rent housing and another person commenting on shady men hanging around. I'm just not reading the same website as you are, I think.
Pan-blog comments
See comment #6 for a dig at low-income housing. I think that there also may have been an additional comment here which is now gone, but I was also reacting to some comments I saw on boston.com.
Comment #6 closest mention of
Comment #6 closest mention of low income was "garbage neighborhood." Which I read at my first reading and still now at the lack of squeaky cleanliness of the area - which tends to be blamed a lot at students (and sadly there is truth to that).
Boston.com/Herald commentary is not surprising. I'm going to have to ask if Adam deleted any comments. Right now, I'm thinking you are looking something that's not really there.
Post numbers seem to shift
What was 6 is now 9 -- but look for the post entitled "very upsetting" -- I think this was the post being referred to....
Entirely possible
Yeah, I may have been reading too much into it, but claiming that the neighborhood has gone down hill since some low-income housing has gone in...I'm not sure how to read that differently.
This was a highly unusual occurrence for the neighborhood; not a sign of the end of days. Or that a bad element has moved in.
That's what's really upsetting to you?
A grad student was found shot on the sidewalk of a residential area, and what's upsetting to you is people theorizing what may have happened? Personally, I'm most upset that someone was killed, but that's just me.
Clarification
Having reviewed comments here and on boston.com, I was largely reacting to the latter, and not comments made here. Apologies to anyone who felt my reaction was directed specifically to them.
Half of the comments on Boston.com
are from people who have screen names like ObamaEatsDogs. It depresses the crap put of me that people like this actually exist, but making snarly, nonsensical comments on every story seems to be their only hobby, so if it keeps them in mom's basement instead of out in the daylight molesting children, then so be it. UH commenters are generally a whole different kettle of fish.
I lived in Allston for 51/2
I lived in Allston for 51/2 years after college and moved out this past fall after 2 men followed me from this exact spot on Allston St to my apartment a a couple blocks away and tried to steal my phone and purse. It was the final straw to send me packing. As a female commuting alone and working late, I never felt safe or comfortable walking home on poorly lit Allston St. and dreaded my nightly trek home from the T stop.
I had years prior considered it a relatively safe neighborhood in large part due to the high student population, but the police responding to my call explained the increased amount of crime in the area and noted that the high student population makes for easy targets. Coupled with the prominent rat population and shady men hanging out on the Brighton Ave end of the street leering and making obscene comments to passage-by, living on Allston St was a horror show. I am really not all that surprised and hope shootings don't continue to increase in this area. My condolences to the victim's family and sympathies for inhabitants of this area who probably now feel much less safe in their homes. I am thankful every day that I got out of this increasingly sketchy and disgusting neighborhood, never more so than today.
It's been a while since high school math
but 51/2 = 25.5 years, right?
I love how Davis said this
I love how Davis said this area is usually "free of crime". Maybe he should walk the streets at night, and talk to the people whose apartments are constantly broken into, or mugged, or whose cars are vandalised. I used to live in that area while at BU, it is sketchy, especially at night. As a woman that worked late hours and took the MBTA, I did not feel safe in that area. I have lived in Allston/Brighton for 30 years (various places) and that area is the only place that made me nervous. That whole area near Ringer Park should be patrolled. I often saw blood on the sidewalk, and was also a victim of an attempted mugging while waiting for the T in broad daylight. Not to mention that poor Irish girl that was stabbed to death in Ringer Park in the 90s. Nice to see the crime there goes unnoticed, and nothing has been done to change the unsafe dynamics of this neighborhood.
Police have better things to do
Like babysit students, address noise complaints and listen to neighbors complain about the large student population. That 3 million spend using high tech toys and babysitting Dewey square was well spent, right?
Meanwhile, it's taking resources away from preventing and dealing with real issues that are creeping up since the great recession hit. How many foot cops could that 3 mil put on a beat in Allston or Dorchester?
Maybe the residents will shift their focus as it gets worse, and maybe BPD will stop going after the low hanging fruit after years of relatively low crime in most Boston neighborhoods allowed.
Crime isn't bad still, but BPD really needs to have an action plan to nip this stuff in the butt, or it's only going to get worse.
That section of Allston
There's a little square of Allston I try to avoid. It's between Harvard Ave and Allston Street east to west, and Comm Ave to Cambridge Street north to south.
That area is loaded with loitering, shady men who lurk, creep, and leer. One of the slumlords back there is renting to an undesirable element that has made that entire pocket of Allston unsafe.
I've lived on the perimeters of that neighborhood for years, and I've always wondered why it is that that tiny pocket is so much worse than the area surrounding it.
About those real issues in the neighborhoods & Occupy Boston
I will accept, arguendo, that the amount of police resources used in Dewey Square might have been higher than was required to maintain order, but people (not necessarily you) keep losing sight of the fact that that was not their only purpose.
As I have pointed out before, you had a bunch of people sleeping outside, at night, in the middle of the city. I shudder when I think about how many of the Occupiers would have been victims of (violent) crime had the police not had such a heavy presence down there. After the first night of tens of people being attacked and robbed of their valuable electronics by hardened criminals (there were several accounts from both the Police and UHers of notoriously bad people lurking around down there) the vast majority of the Occupiers would have picked up their tents and resorted to more traditional means of protest. It is a testament to the BPD and the City that they did not allow that to happen - but protecting people who voluntarily disregard their own safety (truthfully, the probably didn't disregard it, because they knew/expected the police to protect them) like that is expensive.
In sum, anyone who doubts that the police were at Dewey in large part to protect the Occupiers is free to go and set up a tent and sleep in Ringer Park this weekend. Don't forget your iPad so you can be adequately conspicuous.
On the other point, I respectfully disagree with the notion that the BPD should stop "going after the low hanging fruit". I believe (and there is lots of data that shows) that the "broken windows" theory of policing is very effective (there have been several recent stories on UHub alone where fare evaders and the like were picked up and found to be carrying weapons) as a way to reduce overall crime, including violent crime. If there had been cops checking on a report of a loud party on Glenville Ave. near Allston St. at or near the time of this murder, this thread might very well have never existed.
Broken window vs jay walking
First point, I never said there should have been no police presence. But putting 2-3 officers on the beat in Dewey Square to maintain order and observation did not cost the city 3 million. The inappropriate and disproportional response that the Mayor and Police force decided they had to project did.
Second point, I totally agree with. But lets not confuse broken windows, traffic stops, petty theft and even graffiti with responding to noise complaints and other things associated with students, who typically are only annoyances to the community.
Students are not going around assaulting or killing their neighbors. Again, perspective is key. While the police could have stumbled on and prevented this while addressing a noise complaint on Allston Ave, they just as likely could have been breaking up a gathering of 6 people on pratt street from a neighbors "noise complaint" (which is just 6 non-inebriated kids playing videogames with their windows open, don't laugh I was there, it was years ago), which means they weren't patrolling over on Allston Ave like they otherwise would have been at that time.
Thats just a hypothetical, but the point is let's focus on the important stuff. Allocating more and more resources to babysitting students (or other groups) isn't going to reduce violence, drug use, and vagrancy in the neighborhood.
How many police were forced onto the common the other day to babysit adults protesting? I just think we'd all be better served if they put them on patrols and into community building with bad neighborhoods.