Amid Bullet Holes, Neighbors Form Awareness Group [Photos]

Jason had just put his kids—one is 3, the other is an infant—to sleep and was brushing his teeth to prepare for bed when he heard the shots.

Nearby, one of his neighbors has a 4-year-old, who reacted to the noise by saying, "Mommy, I think someone's doing fireworks," according to Jason's telling of the story.

Jason asked that that his full name not be used. He said the Saturday night shooting, on the street in front of 6 Evergreen Ave., that sent a 24-year-old male to the hospital with non-fatal injuries, happened right next to his home, just 15 feet away.

The shots were fired in the direction of another set of neighbors, who have grandchildren who regularly play in the yard, Jason said. He sent to Somerville Patch photos he took of nearby bullet holes. One bullet went through the side of a house. Another punched through the trunk of his neighbor's car.

"If that shooter had turned 90 degrees," Jason said, bullets would have hit the downstairs neighbor's television. Had the shooter aimed a few inches one way or the other, his other neighbors' house could have been hit.

Shooting likely drug related

About 100 feet away is the Marshall Street Playground, where "we find dope bags all the time," Jason said, adding it's not uncommon to encounter syringes in the area.

Cars from out of town regularly drive down the street, stop in front of apartments, then drive off, he said.

Based on preliminary information, Saturday's shooting was drug related and not random, according to an email sent Monday by Deputy Chief Paul Upton of the Somerville Police Department.

Forming a new neighborhood group

For Jason, who moved into the neighborhood in 2006 and has lived in Somerville, off and on, since 1981, things seem to be getting worse. In the wake of the shooting, syringes, dope bags and suspicious activity, he and some other neighbors are starting a new group called the Evergreen Community Alliance.

"We feel we need a neighborhood awareness movement to help our neighborhood become a safer area to live," a flyer for the new group says (you can read the flyer in the photos section above.)

It also asks people to attend the Ward 4 ResiStat meeting on Dec. 5 to discuss the shooting and other neighborhood issues. (The meeting is at 6:30 p.m. at the Healey School.)

People can visit the alliance's Facebook page here and email it at evergreencommunityalliance@gmail.com, the flyer says.

A neighborhood with a bad reputation

Winter Hill, if you go back a few decades, has a history of violence, Jason said. A few blocks down from where Saturday's shooting took place is the old Marshall Street Garage, now a church, that was headquarters of the notorious Winter Hill Gang. 

"The history is great, but we don't need to repeat it," Jason said.