The recent spate of shootings in Boston has citizens nervous about safety, and none has shaken the community like the daylight killing of Luis Troncoso, a 20-year-old Dorchester father of two who was shot in the head while playing basketball in a quiet Jamaica Plain park.
Yesterday, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis toured JP's Centre Street in an effort to reassure business owners and citizens that increased police foot patrols will curb the violence.
"We are pursuing the impact players, we are putting bad guys in jail and we are increasing police on the street as our strategy," Davis was quoted in the Herald.
Davis listed Troncoso among those impact players, saying that he was "very well known" to police. He characterized Troncoso's killing as gang-related. Family members have denied any connection between Troncoso and the city's gangs.
This morning, the basketball court where Troncoso lost his life had become a shrine. Novena candles burned in the light April breeze. A red stuffed toy sat in a cardboard box with a cigarette butt perched in its snout. A black Red Sox hat, presumably Troncoso's, lay adorned by a white rosary.
Encomiums to the departed were scrawled around the center circle of the court. "Good looking out 4 those who looked out 4 you," one read. The backboards of both basketball hoops were painted, "RIP Mata," Troncoso's nickname.
The death has left a scar on the park that no number of increased foot patrols will soon erase.
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