Father, 21, shot to death near Dorchester playground

The man walking alone Wednesday evening with his hands in his pockets turned heads among those gathered on Ripley Road in Dorchester.

Then he started to fire a gun.

“Everybody seen him,” said Javier Barros, 20, who was sitting outside Ripley Playground when the gunman opened fire at about 7:45 p.m. “Everybody asked, ‘Who’s that?’ [He] started shooting.”

The gunfire claimed the life of a 21-year-old father identified by relatives as Roland Singleton. Barros said Singleton, who was his cousin, was walking toward a group standing outside 10 Ripley Road when the shooter fired at him from across the street. The gunman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, he said.

“He died in my uncle’s arms. There was nothing you could do. He got shot in the head,” Barros said Thursday. “He was bleeding massive amounts of blood. The only thing you could do was try to make him hold on. He held on for as long as he could.”

Singleton was pronounced dead at the scene, Boston police said. The investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made. The killing was the 25th recorded in the city this year, a Boston police spokeswoman said.

At the spot where Singleton fell, mourners created a memorial that included some of his favorite things: a bag of barbecue-flavored Lay’s potato chips, a bottle of Fanta pineapple soda, and a San Antonio Spurs cap.

The sidewalk bore the message, “RIP AR,” which relatives said was one of Singleton’s nicknames. The slain man’s dog, a pit bull named Pud, drank water Thursday morning from a plastic food storage container on the sidewalk near the memorial.

Tasha Washington clung to a white T-shirt that mourners signed with condolence notes for Singleton. She said Singleton’s parents were dead, but he called her “Ma.”

“He adopted me as his mother,” Washington said through tears. “He was a good kid. He didn’t start no trouble. He wasn’t one of these gang-banging kids. That wasn’t him.”

Singleton was the youngest of eight children who grew up in Roxbury, his sister, Cyaza, said in a telephone interview.

She said their mother died when Singleton was 10 years old, followed by their father six years later.

“We tried to get him through it,” Cyaza Singleton said. “It really didn’t start to hit home until a couple of months ago ... When you’re young you really don’t understand it. When you get older, you start to feel it.”

She said Singleton was devoted to his 2-year-old daughter, who lives in Atlanta with her mother but spent the summer in Boston.

“His main focus was his daughter,” Cyaza Singleton said.

Singleton loved the color red and wore a backpack wherever he went, his sister said, and was sometimes called “chicken legs” because he had skinny ankles.

“He was raised right. He had a daughter to live for,” she said. “We would never think that anything like this would happen.”

Demain Thomas, 18, stopped by the shooting scene Thursday morning. The spot is across the street from tennis courts, a playground, and basketball court where Singleton enjoyed shooting hoops, friends said.

“He was an all-around player,” said Thomas, who met Singleton six years ago. “It ain’t going to be the same when I come out here ... He ain’t going to be there.”

Washington said Singleton was unable to speak after being shot, but his heart continued to beat.

“All he had was his dog, his daughter, and us,” she said. “That’s all he had and they took him away from us.”