A 9-year-old boy was shot and killed by his 14-year-old brother inside the family’s home in Mattapan today, city officials said this afternoon.
The incident took place at 617 Morton St. shortly before noon. Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said a third sibling was inside the home at the time of the shooting, while the mother of all three children was “nearby.’’
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Evans called the incident a tragedy. The 14-year-old was stopped by Boston police on Walk Hill Street, still carrying the gun that inflicted the fatal gunshot wound to his brother’s chest,” police said.
Details are VERY light right now on who owned the gun, and if there are any ties to the multiple gangs that infest this section of Boston.
Of course Boston is the #1 most unfriendly town to legal gun ownership, and the most dangerous place in Massachusetts. Mattapan is known to locals as “Murderpan” because of the high crime here. Most notably the 2010 “Mattapan Massacre”.
This story also sounds eerily familiar to the shooting of Liquarry Jefferson. Liquarry is the son of a man who was serving time for gang crimes at the time of his death. He was shot by a gun illegally owned by his half-brother (also a sire of convicted gang criminal) who was serving time for dealing drugs at the time of the shooting. The gun was stashed loaded in the brother’s bedroom where the two children were playing.
The mother was convicted of attempting to cover up the nature of the shooting, but no gun charges were filed, despite her having an illegal gun that was both loaded and unsecured in her home.
I’ll give updates when I find them out about this case, still there are some telling details:
The officials said they did not immediately know why the brothers were not in school today.
Not and indictment, but two school-aged children in a crime ridden neighborhood home on a school day with no given excuse is a bit telling. Further:
Another neighbor, Cosandra Harrigan, 44, said in a telephone interview that there had been numerous shootings in the neighborhood in recent years, including one last summer in front of the house where today’s shooting took place.
“Last summer they had a wild party and somebody got shot in front of the same house, too, and died,’’ Harrigan said. “I’ve been here 17 years and I’ve witnessed a lot of shootings.’’
She added that she herself had lost a family member to gun violence on Morton Street.
This is NOT a good neighborhood, so the chances of this being a street gun is VERY high, also this:
Evans said detectives are trying to determine whose firearm it was and whether the gun was legally licensed to someone with ties to the home.
Given that Massachusetts has mandatory registration of all firearms, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to run the serial number through the electronic database. I suspect the reason why there is no record is because one doesn’t exist.
And remember even in a state where you need a permit to own a firearm, and that permit is “May Issue” (at least for the LTC permits that cover handguns like this firearm), and all legal sales must be done through the state between two people with valid LTCs you still hear this:
Nelson Martinez said the shooting was a tragic but inevitable result of so many guns in circulation — and the fear that pushes teenagers to buy weapons.
“The sad thing is it’s so easy to get a gun in Boston,” he said. “He didn’t have to look very hard.’’
This is why we can’t give an inch to the antis, for they will ALWAYS wring their hands, even in an anti-gun Utopia like Boston.
