Boston

Boston Police Investigate Four Fatal Shootings in Four Days

Boston police are on alert after a violent start to the year.

There were four fatal shootings in the city in just four days, from Thursday through Sunday, and there have been no arrests.

The recent pattern of gun violence has already quadrupled the pace the city was on last year at this time.

Why it’s happening this early in the year remains unclear.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh says this pattern of gun violence usually erupts in the warmer months.

"We’re going to be meeting in our office this week to try to figure out what’s happening here," says Mayor Walsh.

Moises Pinet and his young daughter walked out of their apartment Sunday evening, straight into a crime scene on Kenwood Street in Dorchester.

"We just see a body laying there with sheets over it," Pinet said.

On Saturday night, police say Jamal Bannister was murdered outside Whiskey's bar and grill on Gloucester Street in the Back Bay.

"My son right now, he will never see his first child being born," his mother Judy Bannister said.

Earlier in the week, a man in his 20s was also shot and killed on Whittier Street in Roxbury, just across the street from Boston police headquarters.

Minutes later, officers responded to gun fire a few miles away outside a Burger King in Dorchester, leaving another man dead.

"We’ve taken lots of guns off the streets," Mayor Walsh says, acknowledging this is an ongoing effort by police.

Monica Texeira is trying to help by surrounding youth and teens with job training and mentors.

"An alternative to them being out there with the wrong crew as well," she says.

Texeira's church is just a couple blocks from Sunday’s shooting in Dorchester.

Even though there were some safety concerns coming Monday, volunteers like Barry Glass say they showed up to help renovate the church anyway, as a sign of unity.

"If we didn’t show up, it would mean, let's call them the bad guys, they would win," Glass said.

Police believe all the Boston shooting victims this year were targeted, and the incidents remain under investigation.

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