BOSTON (AP) – A recent college graduate originally from Kentucky and visiting Boston to celebrate an aunt’s 90th birthday had just met the three men who took her to an after-hours party where she was innocently caught in gunfire that killed her, police said Monday.
Chiara Levin, 22, who grew up in the small Kentucky town of Danville and had recently moved to New York City, was at a downtown bar Saturday night with two male friends where they met another group of three men around last-call, Deputy Superintendent Daniel Coleman said at a news conference.
The three men, all from Boston, took Levin and her friends to an “after party,” on Geneva Avenue in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. She was in a car with her friends getting ready to leave when an argument at the party turned into a gunfight.
Police ruled out Levin as the target of the gunfire.
“The coward who is responsible for this homicide snuffed out the life of a beautiful young girl by using indiscriminate gun fire,” Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said.
Levin was shot in the head and one of her friends grazed by a bullet, but was not seriously wounded, Coleman said. Police have not determined if any of the three men who took Levin to Dorchester were the targets. Investigators say they have been stymied by many partygoers who refuse to talk.
One of the men who had taken Levin to the party then took her to Boston Medical Center in a dark-colored Cadillac Escalade, but not before stopping at a nearby intersection and letting out two of the other men, Coleman said. Police officials have noted that there was a significant lapse in time between the shooting and when Levin arrived at the hospital shortly before 4 a.m.
“The two friends of Chiara Levin have been fully cooperative and are understandably devastated,” Coleman said. “The other persons who were in that car are known to us and have been interviewed.”
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vowed to end after-hours parties in response to Levin’s death. “It’s crazy. It’s nuts,” he told the Boston Globe. “We know all those parties bring bad events in our city. They always end up in some kind of violence.”
Police said Monday they have already been cracking down on the illegal parties, where organizers serve alcohol and take a cover charge. The events are promoted on the Internet and other underground media.
Davis said a full-time city officer monitors the Internet and gathers flyers to shut down illegal parties. Since Jan. 1, the commissioner said police have shut down 10 after-hours parties in Boston, and raided 10-15 parties thrown by known gang members.
Police cited the host of Saturday’s deadly party, Coleman said. They were also investigating if the wounding of a suspected gang member who sought treatment at Boston Medical Center shortly after Levin arrived there is connected to her shooting.
The day after the shooting, witnesses described a frantic scene.
“There were five or six shots. I ran to make sure my children were in bed. I looked out the window and there were two black cars,” neighbor Jocelyn Duran, 39, told the New York Daily News. “A guy was screaming, ‘Go, go, go!’ and the two cars sped off in different directions.”
Levin’s best friend, Robyn Sussman, told the Daily News she spoke with Levin’s two friends. She said they tried to get Levin to the hospital right away.
“These are good kids, good friends of hers, much more upset than we could be because they saw it happen,” Sussman said.
Levin was working at Judson Management in Manhattan, where she had moved after graduating from the University of Michigan. While she had often told her relatives and friends of her desire to work internationally – and had traveled widely overseas – she had taken the job in Manhattan to be close to friends.
The young woman had shown promise, according to educators in Levin’s home town. Angela Johnson, Levin’s principal at Danville High School, told the Daily News her death was a great loss. “She was such a terrific human being, struck down in her prime,” Johnson said. “We looked forward to seeing what she was going to accomplish and it’s just not to be.”
Levin graduated valedictorian of her small-town high school.
Relatives took refuge in a Boston hotel after the shooting.
“Everyone came down for a happy occasion,” Levin’s cousin, Jonathan Schwab, 26, told the Globe. “It turned out to be a sad one.”
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