Bullet found in South Boston school after fatal shooting nearby

The James F. Condon School is located next to a housing project.Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff/File/Globe Staff/File 2017

A bullet was found inside a third-grade classroom after a fatal shooting in South Boston last week, raising concerns about school security among some parents.

The bullet and a bullet hole were found Friday on the second floor of the Condon Elementary School, authorities said, a day after a 22-year-old man apparently was targeted near the West Broadway Homes, a part of the West Broadway housing development. Police have not definitively linked the bullet to Thursday’s shooting, according to a police spokeswoman.

Meghan Stark, the secretary of the Condon’s parent-teacher association, said Monday that the school needs more consistent security. In another incident last June, a gun was found inside a bathroom at the school on the same day that police reported nearby gunfire.

“We need a better plan to make the area and school safer,” Stark said.

On Monday, police identified the shooting victim as Clevan K. Richards Jr., of Randolph. Richards was shot in his car Thursday just before midnight in the area of Costello Circle. Richards was visiting the mother of his 2-week-old newborn that night, relatives said. They said he spent many nights visiting the child’s mother, who lived in the West Broadway development.

“He would spend every moment that he could with his child’s mother,” said Claudette Pennant, Richards’s maternal grandmother. “It was really important that he would be in his child’s life.”

Richards had worked in construction, among other jobs.

The day after the shooting, Condon administrators sent out an automated message and e-mail to the school community explaining that a shooting had occurred, and the school held recess indoors.

Stark said she has heard about more shootings in the surrounding neighborhood, but she doesn’t feel that she needs to pull her children from the school. Instead, she raised concern about the responses following such incidents.

While dropping off and picking up her children Monday, she said, she did not see any police presence around the school. Stark and other school employees remarked about a similar response after the gun incident last June.

She said she has expressed her concerns to school Superintendent Tommy Chang and City Councilor Michael Flaherty as well as spoken out at public meetings.

“We see an increase in the patrol, it goes down, then something happens again. Something has got to change,” Starks said.

A possible motive for the shooting of Richards was not disclosed by authorities. The investigation by homicide detectives is ongoing.

Richards was the 13th homicide victim of 2018. A man was shot and killed in Hyde Park last weekend, the 14th homicide this year.