N ate Davis is at the dining room table, talking intently toward a cordless phone that stands upright on the wooden surface before him. His wife, Trina, is pacing and crying, stalking back and forth across the threshold of the doorway to the kitchen, as though forever leaving and deciding against it.
It’s been a year, 10 months, and 19 days since Nicholas, their youngest child, only 14 years old, was shot dead a block from the house. Now their bright, college-bound son, Little Nate, is calling from jail. He has been sentenced to 18 months for carrying a gun. Police say he is part of a gang.
Comments
Personally I'd move to Everett and then moan about all the school teachers being white when most of the students are minority.
What is a worse problem, a single massacre that immediately affects 27 families in a bucolic middle class town that has experienced one murder in ten years, or the slow boil that destroys families one at a time through out the year, every year? Of course, a common element seems to be the availability of weapons of instant death to people who should not have them. In the Bodowin-Geneva neighborhood, didn't the article say that fights used to be with fists only? And probably the occasional knife. Something must be done to staunch the flow of guns into irresponsible and destructive hands.
I would be much more inclined to read this large investigative piece if I knew where Bowdoin-Geneva is. I have no idea--or even what it is exactly. A neighborhood in Boston proper, I'm guessing. Shouldn't that be in the lead somewhere?
It says this right below the headline: That was pretty clear, I thought:
It’s a neighborhood known for trouble, but Bowdoin-Geneva is much more than that. A Globe team spent months there, listening and asking why violence persists where love and loyalty also run so strong.This is easy for me to say, of course, but I am wondering what keeps families in a neighborhood this violent? I guess they have developed deep roots so moving is not that easy. If it were my kids in danger I would try to find some way to move out.
In many instances, they cannot afford to move to a safer location. Or, when they do try, they are rebuffed by landlords who want a different type of tenant. Still, many do try to pick up and move their whole families to better circumstances. I worked with a woman whose husband moved the family to a better location to try to keep his two little boys from growing up in a bad situation. But it was tough for them to do so.
Why did the son agree to a plea deal? Based on the circumstances I believe he had sufficient cause to fear for his life. Probation
would have been sufficient.