As I walked to pick up my children from school this afternoon, a helicopter emblazoned with Boston’s Channel 5 logo circled overhead. Tom Brady in town with Gisele?
No, a shooting at 126 Malden Street a few blocks away, where streets were allegedly cordoned off and afternoon school buses were being rerouted to get around the total frenzy of local and state police and investigators mixed with TV cameras, reporters and photographers.
Hampden County District Attorney William Bennett even dropped by, according to the Republican‘s preliminary report by Mary Ellen Lowney.
Before I got to the school, which is a couple of blocks from where the shooting took place, at which Springfield police officer David Askins was apparently shot in the thigh (according to Channel 5) while serving a murder burglary fugitive from justice warrant out of Boston New York state (initial information according to 22News and CBS3), a second helicopter—likely that of 22News—appeared out of the ether to join the first. They either hovered very low, or hovered very high, or circled like loud gnats.
This is the celebrity-city life, I thought. People are dying to see what’s going on down these mean streets, although I prefer it when things are a bit more quiet. I imagine my neighbors would agree.
Hopefully the officer who was shot will be alright, and folks can tune in to news this evening—it will be hard to miss—to find out what all transpired.
Update: 22News reports that a five-year-old girl was hit by a car at 3:45 pm today at Pasadena and Gordon Streets, not far from where the shooting took place. That location is roughly mid-way between two elementary schools serving the area. She apparently went to Baystate Medical Center—where Officer Askins also was taken—with serious head and chest injuries.
As I passed our crossing guard today, who was busy chatting on the corner with our local police scanner addict, I said, "Don’t get shot." I should have added, "Or hit by a car." She experiences near misses every single day she’s out there. Traffic calming is needed in the area rather urgently. The drug dealing is another matter.
Update: The 28-year-old suspect, Aaron Brevoort, according to Police Commissioner Edward Flynn’s press conference this evening, has died. He apparently immediately opened fire on the officers when they rang at the back door of the apartment where he was discovered. The suspect had been sought as a fugitive for several weeks, perhaps originally for a burglary, although reports varied. Flynn added that a one-year-old baby and two women were also in the apartment, and that after the suspect opened fire, he retreated into the apartment, still shooting. To my amateur eye, he seems like he must have been a more hardened criminal than your average burglar from New York.
