A 16-year-old was arraigned today on charges he opened fire on the Red Line platform at Broadway during rush hour last Friday, sending one man to the hospital with gunshot wounds to his thigh, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

The teen, too young to have his name released, was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of a loaded firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition and using a firearm in the commission of a felony for the shooting, around 5:30 p.m., the DA's office reports.

According to the DA's office:

Surveillance video shows a group of four males walking down the stairs to the platform and boarding a northbound train. Shortly after, the victim and his friend are seen boarding the train through the same door. The four males are then seen exiting the train, as a southbound train enters the station and the platform fills up with passengers disembarking. The victim and his friend are seen exiting the train and begin to walk back toward the stairs, behind the four males. One of the males, later identified as the 16-year-old juvenile, is seen reaching into his waistband and pointing a gun down the platform before he flees.

Police recovered a flattened, copper jacketed, hollow-point bullet on the northbound side of the train platform.

The other males have not yet been identified. The investigation is ongoing.

The Huntington News reports on a community meeting in South Boston last week about plans to add more BlueBike stations, which some residents boisterously declared would hurt families, young children, senior citizens and people in wheelchairs. A possible site next to the neighborhood Vietnam Veterans Memorial was decried as "sacrilege."

A federal appeals court today agreed with a lower-court judge that the manager of the Coolidge Corner Trader Joe's had a legitimate reason to fire a 77-year-old worker, because she had been caught buying beer for her 19-year-old grandson, who also worked at the store at the time.

Gloria Cocuzzo sued the chain and the store manager in 2022, alleging she was fired because of her age, and despite a long record of outstanding reviews, bonuses and raises.

But in its ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said that even in looking at the facts in a light most favorable to Cocuzzo, she violated both Trader Joe's policy and state law when when her grandson picked out two four-packs, then handed it to her so she could pay for them at a register.

The court rejected her attorney's argument that bias was proven in several ways, including in the cases of six Trader Joe's employees under 40 who got only reprimands for selling alcohol to minors:

Of those six individuals, five were written up for neglecting to check the identification of underage customers attempting to buy alcohol, and Cocuzzo offers no evidence that these employees knew that the customers were underage. By contrast, Cocuzzo concedes that she purchased alcohol for an individual she knew to be nineteen years old -- a distinction that is sufficiently significant that comparing the five proffered employees to Cocuzzo would be inapt.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted Brian Joyce, 30, of Dorchester on a charge of first-degree murder for gunning down Marcus Dunn-Gordon, 27, of Randolph in the parking lot of Boston Bowl, 800 Morrissey Blvd. in Dorchester, on Sept. 16, 2019, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Joyce will be formally sentenced next Friday, but the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder is life without parole - although with a review of his case by the Supreme Judicial Court.

According to the DA's office, Dunn-Gordon's death started with an argument between Joyce and Dunn-Gordon's friends inside the bowling alley late on Sept. 16.

Dunn-Gordon and his friends decided to leave without escalating the conflict any further and walked out of Boston Bowl. Joyce and his friends followed them outside and confronted Dunn-Gordon and his friends in the parking lot. A physical fight ensued and Joyce pulled out a firearm and shot Dunn-Gordon. Dunn-Gordon ran across the parking lot and collapsed inside the lobby of the Ramada Inn. He was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead. Joyce and his friends fled in a white SUV and another car. Joyce was on probation during the shooting and was wearing a GPS monitoring device after being convicted with an armed robbery with a firearm subsequent offense in Suffolk Superior on June 17, 2019 and also faced additional drug charges in Suffolk Superior.

Joyce was originally scheduled for trial in November, 2020, but some required hearings before trial and then the trial itself were postponed because of Covid-19. A series of other incidents - including his attorney quitting, Joyce refusing to leave prison for one hearing, his new lawyer failing to show up for yet another hearing - postponed his trial until this month, according to court records.

Boston Mega Praise, headquartered in an office park off VFW Parkway in West Roxbury, today sued gospel performer Phil Thompson - born in Boston and a former member of a group called Ashmont Hill - and his promoter over the more than $460,000 it says it spent to arrange his attendance at a performance at Worcester's DCU Center last year, which he pulled out of at the last minute.

In its suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Boston Mega Praise says Thompson performed in a show in Atlanta rather than in Worcester that day, and charges that his promoter, Faith Collective of Chicago, screwed over Worcester in favor of Atlanta after realizing it had double booked its clients in two cities several hundred miles apart.

According to the suit, the local concern and Faith Collective signed a contract on Jan. 4 of last year to put Thompson on the bill of the Boston Mega Praise 2023 show on June 9, 2023 for a 45-minute set, and Boston Mega Praise sent in a $4,000 retainer. Boston Mega Praise began having ads and fliers printed up and travel and lodging arrangements made to suit Thompson's tastes, as well as arranging to hire the sound equipment and technicians he preferred. On Jan. 16, the suit says, Boston Mega Praise began radio and social-media ads promoting the concert in general and Thompson's set.

But on April 26, the complaint continues, Faith Collective told the local concern that Thompson "chose not to appear" in Worcester, sorry, we can send you back your $4,000 deposit.

Faith Collective's alleged reason for not following through with Phil Thompson at said DCU Center was that Faith Collective had double-booked Thompson, for the same date, and allegedly upon realizing said error, Faith Collective and Phil Thompson deliberately and capriciously chose the other event in Atlanta, Georgia rather than Boston Mega Praise Inc., Worcester event.

Phil Thompson and Faith Collective were involved in the promotion of the Atlanta event before notifying Boston Mega Praise, Inc. of the alleged double booking and Phil Thompson's improper damaging refusal to honor his contract to appear at the Boston Mega Praise's Worcester event.

Boston Mega Praise, which formally charged Faith Collective with breach of contract, misrepresentation, bad-faith dealing and unfair and deceptive practices, is seeking treble damages for its claimed loss, plus interest and attorneys' fees.

Faith Collective and Thompson have until March 17 to answer the complaint.

A concerned resident files a 311 complaint about this relic of the time before everybody had their own personal communications device:

Can this obsolete phone booth please be removed?

It's the latest in a series of complaints from concerned residents across the city about pay-phone booths that long ago ceased to have any meaning.

Earlier:
Citizen complaint of the day: Old payphones never die, they just rust away.
When Bostonians relied on pay phones.

Shortly before 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 15, 1942 - a fire broke out in the ceiling above the first-floor kitchen of Luongo's Tap on Henry Street in East Boston - just 2 1/2 hours after some 200 couples had gathered for some dancing in the place's second-floor dance hall. Boston firefighters responded to what grew into a three-alarm blaze in the five-story brick building.

Around 4 a.m, according to an account by the Boston Fire Historical Society, one of the building's walls, without warning, collapsed.

Nearly fifty firefighters were injured or trapped in the collapse. Upon removal of all firefighters present at the scene, six died as a result of their injuries. The six firemen killed in the Line Of Duty at the scene equaled the record number of Line Of Duty deaths suffered by the Boston Fire Department at a single incident in the Department’s history. That incident was the Merrimac Street Fire and Collapse of 1898.

The society's account lists the names and provides photos of the six firefighters who died that morning.

Photo of the scene.

Michael Laurano pays tribute to the firefighters - and the people who rushed to the scene to help pull them out of the rubble:

Clergy entered the still dangerous ruins extending the comforts of faith to those trapped there. As word of the disaster spread by radio, telephone and telegraph wire - then our only means of instant communication - soon at the horrific scene also were multitudes of other responders civilian and military. Coast Guardsmen, Police, ambulance drivers, medical and other support personnel, and newspaper reporters too each played a part by their devotion to duty in East Boston’s epically tragic story of the "Luongo Fire."

Two weeks later, 492 people died in the Cocoanut Grove disaster in Bay Village.

The MBTA is reminding riders that it's halting Red Line service between Harvard and Broadway at 8:30 p.m. this Sunday and continuing through Nov. 23. Well, actually, Nov. 24 - when service will be halted between Harvard to JFK/UMass.

The reason for the latest extended shutdown, of course, is to allow 24-hour repair work to deal with some of the backlog of problems that come with decades of deferred maintenance.

Accessible shuttle bustitution is promised except there will be some issues for people going to or trying to get from Park Street and Downtown Crossing - and the South Station shuttle stop is not where you might expect, the T says:

Riders heading southbound should instead disembark at Otis Street @ Summer Street and use the Winter Street Concourse to travel between Downtown Crossing and Park Street.

Riders heading northbound should instead disembark at Federal Street @ Franklin Street and use the Winter Street Concourse to travel between Downtown Crossing and Park Street.

Shuttle buses will also serve State (on the Orange and Blue lines) and Haymarket (on the Orange and Green lines) for easier connections to other subway lines.

Direct shuttle bus service will operate between Harvard and South Station on weekdays from 6 AM to 8 PM every 15 minutes.

Direct shuttle buses at Harvard will be located at Massachusetts Avenue @ Holyoke Gate.

Direct shuttle buses at South Station will be located at the South Station Bus Terminal (Berths 1 & 2).

The MBTA reports the day started with a switch problem near Wellington on the Orange Line and a dead trolley at Chestnut Hill on the Green Line. Both problems since fixed.

Boston Restaurant Talk reports that Roxy's Grilled Cheese on Cambridge Street in Allston will fling its last cheesy comestible on Nov. 24. The outlet in Central Square in Cambridge, though, will remain open.

The Boston Licensing Board today approved Stuart Eicoff's plan to sell his Beacon Capitol Market, 32 Myrtle St. on Beacon Hill, to Lalit Verma, who also owns the Wild Duck liquor store on Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay.

If also approved by the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, Verma will be just the third family name to be listed on the ownership records of the small market, which has a full liquor license. The store was started in 1916 by the Goldberg brothers. Some 60 years later, the last surviving Goldberg brother sold the market to Eicoff's father, Daniel, who later handed it down to his son.

At a hearing yesterday, Verma's attorney, Joseph Tarby, read a letter from Eicoff saying Verma would prove a good steward of the store's long history, "in this neighborhood that deserves no less."

Boston Licensing Board members today excoriated the owners of a North Station club for the way they handled - or didn't - street-clogging melees that erupted after a pre-Halloween bash that ended with two cops and several brawlers injured, three people facing criminal charges, and with every single District A-1 cop flooding the scene, aided by state troopers and Transit Police officers.

"It was a complete nightmare that happened that night," board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce said.

But the board took no formal action on any possible sanction against Big Night Live, because its veteran Boston operators - Big Night Entertainment - did not get the board any of the video it requested at a Tuesday hearing until just a few minutes before the board was scheduled to vote this morning, and that what video it did provide did not appear to show exactly how more than 1,000 people exited the club after a "Yelloween" party ended early on Oct. 19.

The board also said it wants Big Night to provide a detailed "dispersal" plan for how it empties out guests from the space - which can hold more than 1,600 people - and what its security arrangements are with a security company hired by the place's landlord, Boston Properties, for after-hours patrols of the area, as well as more video than the place handed over to the board this morning.

At Tuesday's hearing, Big Night officials said that after they clear out the club and a pavilion outside, their security guards retreat inside and leave any issues on the sidewalk up to that other company - and that on the night in question, dispersal went well and besides, who knows if the people who wound up in a series of brawls up and down Causeway Street starting around 2:45 a.m. were even Big Night patrons, and, well, there's no evidence they were.

Joyce, however, said today she didn't buy it, at least not based on the evidence she's seen so far. At Tuesday's hearing, a BPD sergeant testified that not only did the people he talked to that night say they'd come from Big Night Live, many were wearing costumes, on a night that only Big Night Live was holding a Halloween event.

Joyce said she cannot recall another licensing hearing where so many police officers - six - testified in a single Zoomed hearing, and that on what video Big Night did provide that she was able to view, "I couldn't even count" how many police officers were on scene.

"Something happened," Joyce said. "I don't know what that is yet, but I don't think dispersal went well."

And even aside from the fact that many of the street fighters were in costume, board member Liam Curran said, Big Night had no way of knowing that the brawlers were not their customers, because, as its own managers testified, they all retreated inside before the trouble began.

Board members said they were surprised that Big Night would say its responsibilities ended at the sidewalk, when the company has operated in Boston for years and knows the board's requirement that venues ensure sidewalks and other areas immediately adjacent to them are peaceful, especially at closing timt.

"They know how we operate," board member Keeana Saxon said. Saxon and the other two board members agreed that also extended to providing the information and video the board had asked for on Tuesday - and not waiting until the very last minute to do so.

The board gave Big Night until Tuesday to provide more video - showing all facets of the exodus of patrons that night - its plan for handling that, any internal reports by club managers on the incident and a copy of any agreement on handling post-closing security with Boston Properties' security company.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a Cambridge clerk-magistrate can hold public hearings on whether to bring charges against a couple dozen alleged clients of a ring that flew in prostitutes from Los Angeles and Las Vegas to render sexual services in high-end Cambridge and Watertown apartments turned into brothels.

The state's highest court agreed with the reasoning of a clerk-magistrate in Cambridge District Court that while "show cause" hearing for misdemeanors, such as paying for sex, are normally private, these cases warranted an exception both because of the high profile of the case and because federal prosecutors, who charged the operators of the ring, emphasized their clients included "government officials, corporate executives, and others in positions of power, wealth, and responsibility," and the cases "raised legitimate public concerns about potential favoritism and bias if such hearings were held behind closed doors, and that these concerns outweighed the interests in continued anonymity for the Does."

The court added that any stigma the allegedly well heeled clients, collectively, the Does - might face is outweighed by the public's right to know:

The briefing [by the Does] here does not identify with specificity what, besides stigma, is at stake by opening the show cause hearings to the public. Speculation as to the future possibility that permitting public access to the hearings could result in an individual employer choosing to take unfavorable action, of its own accord, against one of the accused does not amount to the State depriving the accused of a liberty or property interest.

And it agreed with the clerk-magistrate, who said that for too long, men who had paid for sex were shielded from public scrutiny even as the women they paid were often named publicly, or as the court summarized her argument:

[T]here has been a historical trend to protect or, at the very least, not name buyers who fuel the commercial sex industry, rendering them unaccountable. Reversing that practice and providing the public with access that will allow it to evaluate the fairness of treatment provides a strong counterweight to the privacy interests of those responding to the complaints.

However, in its ruling, the justices did agree with the Does that the applications for criminal charges filed by Homeland Security in Cambridge court must remain private, because those applications could contain erroneous information that the Doe men would not otherwise be allowed to contest in an attempt to show why they should not be charged. And the court set a new rule for lower courts: That clerk-magistrates thinking of opening show-cause hearings to the public must first notify potential defendants of that, to give them a chance to first argue to keep their hearings closed.

In September, one of the people charged in federal court with running the ring, Han Lee, 42, of Cambridge, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to persuade, induce, entice, and coerce one or more individuals to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Her sentencing in US District Court in Boston was scheduled for Dec. 20.

Last month, another participant, Junmyung Lee, 31, pleaded guilty to the same charges. He is scheduled for sentencing on Feb. 12.

Case docket - has links to briefs by parties on both sides.

The city of Boston yesterday sued serial restaurant owner Barbara Lynch and her various corporate entities for unpaid taxes on equipment and furnishings in her Boston restaurants and bars that date to 2011.

In its lawsuit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, the city says it decided to sue now because Lynch has publicly announced plans to end all of her operations by the end of the year:

Upon information and belief, Ms. Lynch, directly or through her multiple corporate entities, does not intend to pay the personal property taxes due to the City of Boston and no assurances have been given that she will pay those taxes.

In a related filing, the city asked for a judge to freeze any sale of her restaurants' assets while the case is pending.

The city alleges that Lynch herself has few assets and that it wants to make sure it gets paid the back taxes before Lynch makes any money from selling off the restaurant/bar assets, the most valuable of which might be each establishment's liquor license, which could go for more than $600,000 apiece on the open market.

According to the lawsuit, the city collector sent Lynch "final notice" bills for unpaid taxes in January, which it says Lynch and her corporate entities stopped paying years ago, save for a single payment for each establishment in 2021:

• $536,737.29 for No. 9 Park, from 2011 to 2024;
• $455,286.94 for Mention, from 2015 to 2024;
• $136,833.13 for B&G Oysters, from 2011 to 2024;
• $129,870.46 for the Butcher Shop, from 2013 to 2024.
• $117,674.43 for Drink, from 2015 to 2024;
• $110,137.65 for Sportello, from 2012 to 2024.

The city is seeking full payment of the taxes it says Lynch owes, plus interest and attorneys' fees.

Complete complaint(4.9M PDF).
City reasoning for a temporary restraining order(497k PDF).

Boston firefighters responded to the section of Allandale Woods off West Roxbury Parkway, VFW Parkway and Weld Street for a brush fire shortly before 5:45 p.m.

Firefighters were able to get two hoses into the woods to fight the fire, which extended across a swath about 40 feet wide in the woods off Lantern Lane.

In addition to two engine companies, BFD brought in one of its brush trucks, stationed on Washington Street across from Stony Brook Reservation, where it normally sees action.

Firefighters reported they had most of the fire out by 6 p.m., but that they continued to hose down possible hot spots.

The National Weather Service cancelled its "red flag" warning for Massachusetts this evening after winds died down, but said the entire state remains vulnerable to brush fires due to both the lack of rain and fairly low humidity.

A group of out-of-state Catholic men, possibly joined by some local Nazis, have decided to try to shove their will down our throats in a march Saturday morning from the Planned Parenthood clinic at Packards Corner down to the Common, where they will keen and wail and demand us godless heathens just stop all this nonsense immediately.

The Men's March to Abolish Abortion reserved a block of rooms at the Parker House and don't worry, they've arranged for some intercessionary praying by the womenfolk at St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine on Boylston Street in the Fenway.

But the good news: Some of the more serious local groups, like Boston DSA and the Mass. Feminist Struggle Committee, are organizing a counter-protest, of course, starting at 11 a.m. at Charlesgate Park, sort of a chokepoint on the path down Comm. Ave. to the Common.

Separately, there will be clowns - with face paint and big shoes and stuff. Clown March Boston is promising to go all out to honk at and razz and make funny faces at the out-of-town X-geners who think they know better than women.

Like always, we’re going to upstage them with a parade of clown costumes and circus music, and we could use your help. If you want to join the band, march alongside it, or otherwise get involved, get in touch.

The Men’s March is not welcome here, and we will not allow their narrative to go uncontested.

CommonWealth Beacon interviewed Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell on her agenda after Jan. 20:

At stake, she said, are the rule of law; reproductive rights; LGBTQIA+ rights; immigrants’ rights; racial justice; environmental justice; health care; education, including student loan programs; gun violence prevention; and federal benefits programs like Social Security and Medicaid.