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New String of MurdersCauses Outcry in Boston\BOSTON (AP) — Pour months after the Roxbury neighborhood was galvanized by the killing of an 11-year-old girl caught in crossfire from rival drug gangs, the area has been shaken by three fatal shootings over Christmas.“I’m so tired of going to funerals for my students,” said teacher Cynthia Swamigan. “To see these kids in coffins is devastating.”More than 400 people attended the funeral in August for Tiffany Moore, who was shot twice in the head while sitting on a corner mailbox talking to friends.The slaying sparked an outcry for more police protection in the lower-income neighborhood where a large percentage of the city’s blacks live, but community leaders say drug-related violence in the area is worsening anyway. Some say there are signs of growing gang activity patterned after Los Angeles-style “color” gangs.On Christmas Eve, the body of 35-year-old Manuel D. Winslow was discovered in an abandoned apartment. He had been shot twice in the head. A man told police he saw two men park a BMW in front of the building and take two rifles from the trunk.On Christmas night, high school basketball star Michael Bennett, 18, was fatally shot in the neck as drove in the neighboring Mattapan section. A revolver was in his pocket and a handgun behind the driver’s seat. Police believe the shooting was gang-related.On the same night, InacioMendes, 43, was fatally shot as he stood in front of a window in his kitchen, police said. His apartment is a block from the street where Tiffany was killed and where repairmen and taxi drivers sometimes refuse to go.A police spokesman, James Jordan, said he was certain the gunman intended to hit someone else.“We’re in big trouble here,” said community leader Ben Haith of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center. “We’re becoming like L.A.”Boston police spokeswoman Jill Reilly said any comparison of gangs in Boston and Los Angeles is inappropriate. Los Angeles had 300 gang-related homicides this year, compared with Boston’s two or three, she said.The 30 additional officers assigned to the bustling, inner-city area since Tiffany’s death are not enough to stop the escalating drug trade and a citywide homicide total that has jumped 33 percent over last year, neighborhood activists said.Haith complained that the city’s response has been little more than a token. While a police cruiser is now usually stationed in a vacant lot across the street from where Tiffany was shot, it rarely moves and the officers do not leave the car, hesaid, prompting neighbors to joke that the cruiser was sent to guard the mailbox.“It just sits there,” he said. “The criminals already know their routines and they just avoid them.”According to the police report on the Mendes killing, a youth wearinga red cap and red jacket with a yellow stripe across the back was seen running near the house immediately after the shooting.Ed Brooks, who heads the Community Patrol, a group of about 30 residents who patrol hotspots and report tips to police, said the clothing description fits that of a gang operating in the area./70'76(K7
Newspaper Details
Winchester Star
Winchester, Virginia, US
Thu, Dec 29, 1988
Page 27
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
WI, USA 30 May 2022
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