Local News

Four people were injured in weekend shootings in Dorchester

The shootings came just days after a man was shot and killed in a Dorchester barber shop.

Boston police investigate after an early-morning triple shooting on Hancock Street in Dorchester on Sunday. Pat Greenhouse / The Boston Globe

By Abby Patkin

October 31, 2022

2 minutes to read

Four people were shot and injured in Boston over the weekend, the latest in a recent wave of violence that has rocked the city and spurred community leaders to call for immediate action.

Two men and a woman were shot early on Sunday morning on Hancock Street in Dorchester, The Boston Globe reported.

Gun violence

One of the men was in critical but stable condition on Sunday evening, according to the Globe. The other two victims suffered non-life threatening injuries in the shooting, which happened around 5:50 a.m.

Hours earlier, a man was in critical condition — later updated to stable condition — after being injured in a shooting on Erie Street in Dorchester around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Globe.

No arrests have been made in the shootings, the newspaper reported.

The two incidents came just days after 43-year-old Herman Maxwell Hylton was shot and killed inside Dorchester’s Celebrity Cuts Barber Shop on Wednesday night. Hylton was the seventh person to die in a shooting in Boston this month.

“We’re coordinating every resource from law enforcement, street outreach, and community partners to target interventions and get guns off the streets,” Mayor Michelle Wu said Sunday night in a statement obtained by the Globe. “We’ll continue to focus on violence prevention with the full weight of all city departments and community partnerships.”

While Massachusetts’ gun control laws have been effective in reducing gun deaths, people can acquire guns in neighboring states with less stringent rules, John Rosenthal, co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, told the Globe.

Economic justice also plays a role, he said.

“If you live in Roxbury, Mattapan, [or] Dorchester, it is easier to find a gun than find a job,” Rosenthal said. “And that is the case across America in our poorest neighborhoods. … There is a relationship between economic justice, crime reduction, and lower gun crime.”

Of the more than 1,700 fatal and non-fatal shootings that have occurred citywide since 2015, nearly three-quarters happened in Dorchester, Roxbury, or Mattapan, according to Boston Police Department data.

The Rev. Kevin Peterson of The New Democracy Coalition has called on police and city leaders to declare a state of emergency in Boston.

Peterson is holding a meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at the Gilbert Albert Community Center in Dorchester, bringing community members together to help devise a public safety strategy for the city’s Black community.

“On the most negative side of things, people within the Black community are growing cynical as to whether they are regarded as equals in this city, in relation to police protection,” he told Boston.com in an interview last week. “That reality is very, very disappointing. In fact, it’s very distressing.”