BOSTON (WHDH) - Boston city leaders spoke out Thursday after an uptick in violence that included three shootings in three days this week.
On the same day that the family of a man killed in a recent shooting shared details about their loved one’s life, Commissioner Michael Cox and Mayor Michelle Wu also discussed efforts to curb the violence.
“We’re here and we care,” Cox said. “From our perspective, people need to understand this is a safe city. We can be safer with the public’s help.”
On Wednesday, surveillance video captured the moment shots rang out along a sidewalk close to a liquor store on Shawmut Avenue in Roxbury. In one angle, a man is seen walking up the street with his hands in his pockets. Video then shows the man pulling out a gun and opening fire into a crowd of people, narrowly missing one man. Another man is later seen coming out of a building and shooting back.
A second angle shows people scrambling to safety, with one young girl at one point ducking behind a car as bullets fly.
The owner of the liquor store said he gave his store’s surveillance video to police, adding that the incident was frightening for those who live and work in the area.
A day before Wednesday’s incident, on Tuesday, surveillance video captured other moments when a gunman opened fire at the intersection of Dorchester Avenue and Gallivan Boulevard in broad daylight in Dorchester. One bullet ricocheted off a front door and others just missed a fire truck driving through the area.
On Monday night, a man, later identified as 33-year-old Daniel Mayers, was shot and killed in a car on Columbia Road in Dorchester.
In a statement on Thursday, Mayers’ family said he grew up in the neighborhood where he was killed. His father was a reverend at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Columbia Road for nearly 20 years. Mayers then served as a pastor at a congregation in Haverhill.
Mayers also worked for the city of Boston for more than 10 years, working for the Boston Public Schools Welcome Center, Transportation and Special Education departments.
“He always tried to do everything within his means to assist any colleague, parent, or student he ever came across that reached out to him for assistance, navigating with ease between English and Spanish,” the Mayers family said.
In the aftermath of recent incidents, Wu and Cox on Thursday announced their plan to address violence and start the summer safely, including more community policing block parties, $19 million for summer jobs and efforts to act quickly when crime happens.
“If or when they see something or think something is going on, let us know,” Cox said. “Give us an opportunity to actually get there to prevent something in general.”
“We are working quickly and in collaboration with the community to make sure that every possible way we can be building community safety, getting resources out and looking to eliminate gun violence and violence of any kind in Boston — That is our number one priority,” Wu said.
Cox earlier this week asked anyone with information on the shooting that killed Mayers to contact police.
As investigations into each of this week’s shootings continued on Thursday, the Mayers family also asked for the public’s help.
“If anyone in the public has information that may be helpful in finding the person who committed this heinous and senseless act, we plead with you to please come forward and assist the authorities in helping our family seek justice for Danny,” the family said in their statement.
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