BOSTON (AP) – Police headquarters and two universities are steps away from the Alice Taylor housing project but they seemed like miles Monday as Analicia Perry’s friends visited the spot where she was fatally shot, exactly four years after her brother was killed at the same location.
Analicia was lighting candles at a makeshift shrine to her brother, Robert Perry, on Annunciation Road in the Roxbury neighborhood when she was shot in the head at 11:30 p.m. Saturday, police said. “Ana Banana,” as friends call her, leaves a 4-year-old girl.
“What are they going to tell that baby, she’s only 4,” said Cleatha “Red” Rainey, whose daughter was friends with 20-year-old Analicia. “This is scary.”
There were no arrests as of Monday, as a sidewalk memorial grew. Friends, many of whom declined interview requests, placed teddy bears and candles at the site.
A message written on a white cotton t-shirt attached to a chain-linked fence said, “Anna, I love you Boo. You will be missed. Don’t worry, I will help with Nyarie,” referring to the victim’s daughter.
Analicia, a graduate of North Cambridge Catholic High School, planned to attend Quincy College and wanted to be a nurse, friends said.
“She kept asking me, Is it good to be a nurse?'”‘ said Rainey, an assistant nurse at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. “She said How do I do it?”‘
The family moved out of the housing development four years ago after her brother was fatally shot. He was 26 and was remembered as a motorcycle enthusiast who would take younger kids for rides during the summer. Police reportedly identified a suspect in that slaying, but days later that man was himself shot to death.
The 366-unit Alice Taylor development sits directly behind the Boston Police headquarters, and in the shadow of Northeastern University and Wentworth Institute of Technology.
Some residents have expressed concern about crime enforcement in their neighborhood.
But police spokesman David Estrada defended the department’s tactics.
“It may that there are patrols and people don’t see them,” he said. “There may be undercover officers in the area actively working.”
Estrada said the department listens to residents’ concerns.
“Every complaint that comes into the department is taken seriously,” he said. “Neighbors have been interviewed by detectives. Everything is going to be taken into consideration.”
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