By Brian R. Ballou, Boston Globe staff writer
© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
A Mattapan neighborhood was tossed into chaos yesterday afternoon when a man who had fired several shots near Westmore Road barricaded himself and a woman inside a multifamily house, surrendering after a two-hour standoff, police said.
A police sergeant working a detail on Harvard Street yesterday about 1:45 p.m. heard gunshots and seconds later located a male suspect, who fled on foot when he saw the officer, said Rafael E. Ruiz, deputy superintendent. “There was a woman with him. They ran into 78 Westmore.”
Ruiz said the sergeant called for backup, reporting a possible hostage situation. Police then swarmed into the neighborhood.
Dozens of police, including an entry team dressed in SWAT-type uniforms, surrounded the house at the corner of Westmore Road and Gilmer Street, and negotiators using a bullhorn urged the gunman to give up, witnesses said.
He eventually did, walking out the front door with his hands above his head. Police ordered him to descend the stairs backward . Minutes after police handcuffed him, the woman he was with came out of the house in the same manner, as instructed, because authorities were not certain at that point whether she was an accomplice or had been taken against her will. She was later questioned and released. A police spokesman said the two were acquaintances.
Yesterday evening, police identified the male suspect as Antoine Hicks, 19, of Mattapan. He is scheduled to be arraigned today at Dorchester District Court, where he face charges of a second offense of unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and unlawful discharge of a firearm.
A resident of the first floor of the newly built, two-story house that Hicks ran into said she heard at least three shots and immediately ran out the back door. She declined to give her name. Police evacuated several residents from the house and others nearby, ushering them away as the drama unfolded.
Hicks stayed in a square-shaped hallway behind the front door of the house, Ruiz said. Police said they recovered a firearm from the hallway where Hicks had been hiding. Police said they were uncertain why Hicks was shooting. Several orange cones covered ballistics evidence yesterday on Gilmer Street, about 100 feet from the house where he was holed up. There were no injuries, Ruiz said.
Dorrian Garrison, 36, lives next door to the house where the standoff occurred. “Since the first of the year, it’s been crazy,” he said. “You hear the gunshots all the time. When I first heard it, I didn’t pay it no mind, because you hear the gunshots all the time.”
Garrison and several other residents were evacuated and waited behind yellow police tape on Harvard Street.
“It’s rough around here, but we have to deal with it,” he said later, sitting on his front porch.