Bunker Hill housing project tops BPD list of most violent areas
By Michele McPhee
Friday, June 24, 2005 - Updated: 10:29 AM EST
The brutal murder of a 16-year-old Charlestown High football player is the latest in a slew of bloody incidents that has made the Bunker Hill housing development the most violent ``reporting area'' in the city, according to a Herald review of Boston police data.
The murder of Kevin Walsh, who was fatally stabbed early yesterday morning during a brawl that left another man critically injured, is the second killing in the project this year. Robert Russell, 43, was shot dead on March 6, a block away from the lobby where Walsh died in his little brother's arms.
The slayings are part of a startling spike in violent crimes in the Bunker Hill projects, making the neighborhood - known by police as Reporting Area 900 - the bloodiest in the city, according to statistics that tally murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries and larcenies.
There were 32 of those crimes reported in the project from Jan. 1 to June 14.
Despite the soaring crime rate - which BPD brass has attributed to a rampant drug problem - Mayor Thomas M. Menino has not assigned a youth street worker to the Bunker Hill projects, city officials acknowledged yesterday.
There are currently 22 street workers assigned to ``hot spots'' in the city, including Grove Hall in Roxbury; Morton and Talbot Avenues in Dorchester; and Eagle Hill in East Boston.
Charlestown has only one street worker covering the entire neighborhood, which includes several housing developments.
``This is an awful way to open up the city's eyes, to lose the life of a good kid with his whole future in front of him,'' said Charlestown High School special education teacher George Furrows, who coached Walsh on the Townies football team. Furrows came to Walsh's home in tears yesterday accompanied by several of the victim's teammates.
``He was a wonderful kid,'' Furrows said. ``This is such a senseless crime.''
Yesterday, Robert Lewis, the executive director of the Boston Centers for Youth and Families, said the murder will ``mobilize'' the city to have a presence at Bunker Hill.
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Bunker Hill Monument looms over the troubled housing development in Charlestown.
(Staff photo by Stuart Cahill) |
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