fb-pixelDorchester man slain; Motive sought - The Boston Globe Skip to main content

Dorchester man slain; Motive sought

Shot in head 2 blocks from site where shop owner gunned down

Bloodstains in the dirty snow on the sidewalk in front of a Boyd Street house were testimony to another killing yesterday, two blocks from the AMC Market where store owner Manuel Monteiro was gunned down last Monday.

Michael Mack, a 21-year-old resident of Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, was found around 4:30 a.m. yesterday lying unconscious on the Boyd Street sidewalk with a bullet wound to the head. He died a half-hour later at Boston City Hospital.

Neither police nor friends of the victim could explain the killing. Police said they had neither a suspect nor a motive.

Several neighbors said a loud party at one house on the street lasted into the morning hours yesterday, but it could not be determined whether Mack was at the party before he was shot.

Advertisement



One neighbor said she called police about the party at 2:30 a.m., but by 3 a.m., when she went back to bed, no officer had shown up and the party was still going strong.

Mack’s family refused comment.

Friends described Mack as someone who never looked for trouble and liked playing basketball at a nearby school.

“He was an average kid, hanging out with the brothers and stuff,” said Curtis Bufford.

Another friend said he felt “hurt” by the killing.

“We all hung together. It wasn’t a gang. It was just four or five of us hanging together,” he said.

The friend, who requested anonymity, said he felt trapped in the neighborhood, where he has lost three friends to street violence within a year.

“This is what we live in. This is what we see every day,” he said.

Neighbors, some of whom had patronized the AMC Market until the Monday shooting closed it down, saw the killing yesterday as yet another example of how their neighborhood streets have been taken over by violence.

Advertisement



“The whole place is getting dangerous. You live in fear, man,” said Donell Brown, who lives in a three-family house surrounded by a six-foot fence next door to the scene of the latest killing.

“It’s very rough but what can I do?” Brown asked. “To move from here I have to have more money.”

“Scared,” was how one longtime neighbor described her feelings. “You have to worry a lot more about your kids than you used to.”

“This area is like a time bomb,” said another Boyd Street neighbor, who called for more intensive police presence in the neighborhood to deal with young toughs who hang out there. “What do we have to do, shoot the whole neighborhood first?”

Monteiro, 68, was shot and killed during a robbery last Monday.

Police Thursday night arrested Michael Hoilett, 26, of Codman Hill Avenue, Dorchester, and charged him with killing and robbing Monteiro.