Dianne Wilkerson, president of The Friends of the Melnea Cass Facility, Inc., lays out what she knows about the gunfire outside the facility during a memorial for Angel Oller on Aug. 17 that amazingly ended with no injuries among the scores of children and mourners present.

Despite the fact that the Cass is a state-owned building where the Mass. State Police have jurisdiction, they were never notified of the plan to hold the memorial service in the Cass. We know that the comments from law enforcement right after the murder of Oller stated it was gang involved. We know that there have been no arrests to date for his murder. We also know that Oller’s aunt, a BPD officer, is on video receiving a gun from a young man in the aftermath of the shooting at the Cass. Really weakens the suggestion that the bad actors all set upon the Cass in a random act.

What we don’t know is how any rational, responsible adult could have concluded that the Cass was an appropriate site to hold a memorial service, in a building with little children, without security, for a victim of a gang involved murder.