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Prosecutors: Teen decided he'd rather kill somebody than go to a Sox game
By adamg on Tue, 09/06/2011 - 5:28pm
Arias outside the Alice Taylor project. Compare.
From his Facebook page.
Ricardo Arias had a one-day pass from the Judge Connelly DYS center in Roslindale to see the Red Sox play the Rangers at Fenway Park this past Saturday night. But as the Sox took the field, Suffolk County prosecutors charge, Arias was standing near the Villa Victoria housing project in the South End with a pal, asking passersby if they lived in "the Villa." And when one answered "yes," Arias pulled out a gun and shot him dead, they say.
Arias, 17, with ties to Mission Hill, was ordered held without bail at his arraignment in Boston Municipal Court today on charges he gunned down Alex Sierra for the simple act of living in the wrong place. An alleged 16-year-old accomplice was held in lieu of $250,000 bail.
Sierra, Assistant District Attorney Amy Galatis said in court, had no criminal record, no ties to gangs. In fact, friends say, he was taking classes to become a medical assistant. Arias, who formerly lived in the Alice Taylor project near the Ruggles T stop, ended that dream by shooting Sierra several times, according to the charges against him. As Sierra staggered into the nearby El Barberitos salon, bleeding heavily, Sierra and his the other guy - not named because of his age - fled in a gold minivan to Prentiss Street, where Arias once lived.
Teens from Mission Hill and "the Villa" have long feuded. In fact, a Harvard summer camp program attempts to pair kids from the two neighborhoods to try to get them to know each other and reduce the violence. Arias's left arm is tattooed in memory of Henry "Antoniocito" Mateo, a Mission Hill teen stabbed to death in 2009.
"Alex Sierra had no criminal record, he had never been arrested, he had no gang affiliation, and neither he nor his family did anything to deserve this fate," Suffolk County DA Dan Conley said in a statement. "Now his name joins the terrible litany of precious young lives lost to mindless violence: Cedirick Steele. Herman Taylor III. Nicholas Fomby-Davis. Steven Odom. Trina Persad. Germaine Goffigan. There can be no motive to explain a crime like this, and there can be no place in civilized society for the type of person who commits it."
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Comments
not one for capital punishment
Because I don't trust the state to get every case right, and just one wrongful conviction is one too many.
But I really, really wouldn't mind if this worthless POS was sent to the gallows in this pretty open and close case. There's something deeply wrong with, psychopathic even, when a person kills someone without cause.
gang warfare
In his mind this was probably some twisted attempt at revenge. Take a look at the kid's arms in those photos. He's tattooed with the names of friends killed in gang violence, including Henry Antonito Mateo, who was stabbed to death two years ago. It's an endless cycle of violence.
Medical Assistant?
Someone who is capable of shooting a person in cold blood in a premeditated manner for absolutely no reason was taking classes to become a medical assistant. Part of me is glad he will not be a medical assistant now.
No, he wasn't
Sierra, the victim, was taking the classes. Arias was on a one-day pass from a DYS facility.
So the other part of you
So the other part of you didn't agree?
re-read
it was the victim that was taking classes, not the suspect
Life is all about choices . . .
On what basis and who rendered the decision that Arias was not a threat to the community and ultimately issued the l day pass?
Great...
yet another "empathetic" judge.
The more things change...
Thinking how they are killing
Thinking how they are killing because they just live in certain area. Perhaps just flooding both places with students is ideal. Then the priced out gangsters would have no long have a reason to feud. Or at least no longer because one happens to be from Mission Hill and the other from the Villa.
I don't get at all what is on their mind when they decided it's a good idea to go hunt and shoot some bystander who just happens to live in a groups of buildings a few streets away means.
Well that is part of the
Well that is part of the problem with the juvenile system in the state. Juvenile offenders are not really treated like criminals aside from being in the custody of DYS and not having the liberty to come and go as they please. I think the state focuses more on trying to "rehabilitate" youthful offenders. I know they can't really punish the kids as they do adults. But, Xbox and playstation 3 have no place inside of a detention facility.
Their 'hood seems to be all a
Their 'hood seems to be all a lot of these thugs have.
No future. No chance at "respect" w/o the power of a gun.
Nowhere to go for many of these kids (it must seem to them) who don't have the smarts, initiative, support, or imagination to break out.
BTW, just my opinion. Pretty educated, I know the hood, but just that.
I'm not citing shit and I'm not arguing.
Urban Terrorists
Rest in Peace to all the victims of urban terror. School starts tommorrow, let the games begin at thug and mug high school. The MBTA will be out of control by next week as the stations are overun by the extras from the movie Warriors.
tiffany more, steve odom, trina persad, germaine goffigan,......
luis gerena, dakeem galloway, michael mcquay, louis brown, katherine herpin, jacqueline bispham.....
kai leigh harriott, a survivor who broke my heart.
it seems like every year at least one (two? three?)names get added to this senseless list. i dont think it will ever stop. growing up in the city is hard enough, growing up fearing you will be murdered because you live on a certain street or in a certain building makes no sense at all.
the mayor worries about store displays on newbury street as 13 year old bodies lay dying in the streets. the BPD have cops protecting trucks full of cocaine and working as doormen for brothels. politicians are stuffing their bras with hundred dollar bills at breakfasts on beacon hill. does anyone in power really give a shit? does anyone try to find ways to change things for the better? do most kids in the tougher parts of the city even have a 50/50 chance? 40/60?
wake up boston. things arent getting better.
They have way more than a
They have way more than a 50/50 chance. Boston has a population of more than 600 thousand and with a homicide rate of less than a hundred a year over the last few years, do the math. The problem starts at home, monsters are created not born.
Don't be so sure
Sociopaths can pop up in the "best" of families.
Parents can only do so much, even when they want to. The cops won't take a kid into protective custody, and the DYS won't get involved even when parents beg them to help them control a wildly out of control kid who may have behavioral or emotional disorders or simply be flat out mentally ill.
Be careful - karma is a female dog. You may have to deal with this yourself someday - 24/7, on your own.
Citations please
Sociopaths "pop up" how often?
Where are the stats on cops and social services ignoring kids at need?
A lot of unsubstantiated claims there.
Back them up.
The first one is easy
Do a google search. Seriously, anyone who took psych 101 as an undergrad learned that the research shows that psychopaths are born with a miswired brain and pretty much nothing can change it.
And no, many people who commit crimes aren't psychopaths, but she's right that it's an innate condition, a birth defect of sorts, that has nothing to do with heredity or life experiences.
Oh, and
Anecdotal, yes, but I can give you firsthand knowledge that I'm often in the situation where I'm working with someone who is in such a state that s/he just is not safe living in the community, but there's no type of residential services that the person qualifies for. I've had DCF close literally dozens of cases with particular families, and I've had people who've been hospitalized for 72 hours against their will literally dozens of times but who aren't unsafe enough to be court ordered to treatment so they leave after the 72 hours and go right back and do other things that get them hospitalized.
Not a scintilla of evidence
Not a scintilla of evidence of sociopathy or any other disease. Yet you and Swirrly rally with your reactionism.
If this was a white kid shooting up non-whites you'd be ready to string him up.
Similarly very-vague circumstances in other cases here and you're both crying racism and/or homophobia.
You see homophobia in FaceBook statuses and are arguing that this kid is diseased?
Maybe the 0.009% homophobes you can actually document on FB are sociopaths.
Are they off the hook?
How small is a scintilla?
You don't think killing someone solely because they live in a particular building doesn't exhibit signs of remorseless devaluation of human life and lawlessness (some of the primary criteria for diagnosing psychopathy or even just anti-social personality disorder...both types of sociopathy)?
I don't take research requests
... from people incapable of empathy, using google, or constructing a consistent pseudonymous identity.
Oh, and taking your day off from juvy to grab a gun and randomly kill the first person who answers a question in "the wrong way" isn't a sign of sociopathy?
Really?
Add "incapable of logical inference" to that above list.
Never mind that I didn't say that Arias was a sociopath - just that monsters like sociopaths are clearly born, not made.
As for "reactonary (implied liberal) this and that blah blah blah", why don't you google "Huckabee" and "convicted rapist freed" and "murder" for more perspective on who likes to make excuses for criminals?
How about from me then?
How about a request from me then? Because I'm also not impressed the sociopath reasoning excusing his actions.
First, from the commentators above, that one of his tattoos is the name of a friend that was killed a few years back. That, to me, is a sign that have some ability to have some emotional capacity. My understanding of sociopaths, they wouldn't care in the emotional way of the loss of his friend. Especially in such that he would have a tattoo create a sentimental symbol for his friend.
Second, sociopaths, though without a sense of compassion or restraint, can still reason. A sociopath should still recognize how much it is against his interest of killing a random guy. Sociopathy is no excuse for idiocy. Now idiocy, seeing that he lacked the foresight and unable to see the absurdity over killing motivated by hatred over two neighborhoods a few streets from each other, is more debatable.
---
Now that said. Reading from the above, there also seem to be mixing up between arguing about individual cases and averages of a group. The first half, up to Eeka's responses, the matter seems to be about how many perpetrator of homicides in Boston stems bad upraising or being born sociopathic. From Eeka's responses, the thread turns to the individual case of Ricardo Airas's and his murder. I think the anon was doubting how common are they, not doubting their existence or Ricardo Arias (this also means that when I ask for evidence, I'm talking about the individual case of Arias, not the how common does sociopaths exist. I will note to you, as a separate subject that when you responded to Nigel Bruce with sociophathy, that I am leaning that most of the inner city problems is from others factors rather than sociopathy or some other psychological problems that can only be solved with state intervention).
what
I don't see anyone justifying behavior that harms other people. I'm not sure where you're getting that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Swirly was trying to refute the earlier comment that all people who commit crimes do so because their parents failed. She's absolutely right that some people are psychopaths and commit crimes regardless of having had good parenting. Do we really need to discuss this any further?
I think it would be fair to say
that when you add poverty (not race) into the equation, sociopathic behavior can become much more dangerous. And urban poverty has the gang/crime element mixed into the situation and that fuels the fire even more.
But you see kids of bad rich parents failing as well. I think the difference there is that the urban gang element is taken out. The rich kid doesn't need to commit crimes to get his money, he gets it from his parents, and the rich kid doesn't have the gang mentality to shape his behaviors into killing other human beings. The rich kid sociopath is more isolated and his behaviors effect less people.
I bet if you took 50 random students from BB&N, and another 50 random students from Dorchester High School, you would probably find percentage wise an equal amount of sociopathic behavior in each group.
Yep
All of that's true; it's also often the case that psychopaths in more affluent situations get labeled as having mental illness and end up institutionalized before they can do much damage, where the same behavior in an urban environment is going to get labeled as bad kid, crappy parenting, etc. and the kid will look less eligible for treatment and the family will be less able to access it. Really, it's all the same disease, but people are quicker to blame parents and society when it's in an urban/poor context.
A true psychopath in any situation though will often go against all sorts of norms and will do whatever s/he wants. We certainly had affluent suburban people in offender treatment who'd stolen things they could easily afford and who'd harmed people who posed no threat to them.
I took Psych 101 and I
I took Psych 101 and I learned that the research shows we don't know squat about people's motivations. Neurobiology vs. social psychology is an academic battlefield, not settled science. The answer is doubt and uncertainty, not a pat easy story to suit one's current point of argumentation.
I also took law classes and know that this person is accused, not convicted, so you're all just blowing smoke at this point.
Finally, I also know Alice Taylor Homes first-hand. I'm getting the sense none of you do. That does not privilege my thoughts, but it certainly roots them in something besides my own bubble.
im not just talking murder
how many of these kids wind up nowhere? pregnant at 15? dropped out and working crap jobs for the rest of their lives? living in their parents basements, hiding their heroin/oxy addiction until it grows out of control and the stealing and lying forces them to the streets? how many of them die at 30 on someones couch after years of substance abuse? how many of them sit in parks, drinking beer until they are 40? using ebt cards, not working and hoping to hit it big on a scratchie? how many of these people started life in a boston public school?
i know there are many sucess stories, i know many personally. i know more that didnt make it, arent making it, and wont make it. you are right, the problem does start at home but many of these homes are more than broken. they are shattered, imploded. children of addicts usually find addictions themselves. children of uneducated arent getting scholarships to college. children of babies become children with babies. its a vicious circle.
a lost generation that seems to be in a downward spiral. generation x became generation y. generation y is becoming generation who gives a shit.
Lost Generation?
I think the problem is that we only hear about the exemplary kids and the kids who go off the rails in one way or another.
In the middle are the great masses of kids who do okay in middling schools, take up a trade or go to a vocationally-centered junior college or community college, work, and get on with their lives. We never hear about these people, but we interact with them every time we go to the doctor and get blood drawn, get our car inspected or oil changed, get our teeth cleaned, visit a bank teller window, have someone hook up our computer at work, get a haircut, get a windshield replaced, etc. They do nothing notorious or meritorious, so we never hear about them ... they just make our entire society as we know it happen on a daily basis.
Here, as in all things having to do with young people, skewed media coverage has cost us our greater sense of proportion.
Respectfully
ma'am, I agreed all the way up to "skewed media coverage." What is news, but tales of the out-of-the-ordinary? Seriously, who grabs the Globe or Herald to read: "great masses of kids doing OK in middling schools! Taking up trades! Working as bank tellers and hygienists!"
I know you were making that point that most kids are decent, but no need to slap at the media for doing their job, which is telling us the things that just happened that don't usually happen. The day dead-eyed psycho killers (not referring to anyone particular from Mission Hill, absent footnotes - and we *know* all the crime in Mission Hill is committed by drunk college kids anyway) stop being news, and "good kid graduates, gets steady job!" is on the front page, we're toast.
So you are saying ...
... that the job of the media is to entertain, frighten, and titilate ... not inform?
Then we are toast.
Pretty much
This is what decline and fall of a society looks like.
Our decline is debatable.
Our decline is debatable. But if we are, I doubt media sensationalism is a symptom, they been doing it since the 1800's.
How long does the decline and
How long does the decline and fall take? Journalism has been like this for as long as we have been a country.
The job of the media is to
The job of the media is to make money. If you know of an idealistic 'golden age' of media then please do share!
The role of the media is to present the otherwise unknown
It's hardly informative to report that the sky is blue.
MSM coverage of positive/interesting events is skewed though
I think most of us did this exercise in school at some point, right? Pick up a newspaper, count the positive/interesting stories (interviews with a business owner, discussions about local bureaucracy, lifestyle columns about what people fixing up their yards and homes, cheesy stories about some family going back-to-school shopping, etc.) and see if the income brackets of the city are equally represented, or the racial breakdown of the city, or the family constellation types, etc.
What about non-mainstream media?
On the front page of Universal Hub there are mostly stories of bad things happening. There are even two stories about this murder.
It's what the people want to read so that's why it's reported. I guess you could convince the government to subsidize fair and equally representative news reporting, but no one would read it.
Kind of off topic, (I think Eeka)
But in College,a professor told me that the USA Today has at least one photo of a female and one photo of a minority on the front page of each of its four sections.
Every once in a while I'll check to see if this is true and I still have yet to see one of the front pages not have a female and a minority.
I don't remember the reasoning behind this, but I always found it interesting. If true, it must mean that someone is in charge of making sure a photo/story gets in their on these pages.
Ooh, cool
Didn't know what about USA Today, and usually avoid that paper. Will check it out.
Shouldn't half of the photos (on average) be females though? And 5% be gay or lesbian, 1% be transgender, 13% be Black, 5% be Asian, 20% have a disability, etc...? Otherwise, it's not representing the population equally (and yes, I know it would be pretty much impossible to do so, and that's kind of my point, that there are reasons why it's going to be skewed and why certain groups don't get equal media representation).
The problem is not just the
The problem is not just the kids or the poverty the come from but there area lot of flaws and loop holes within our Judicial system. A DYS is actually a form of Incarceration for adolescent citizens and many of them are there for serious criminal charges. Juveniles in DYS custody should be treated as criminals regardless if they are under 18. They should be given the same privileges to show good behavior and receive rewards for improvement as an ADULT prisoner would but they should not be trusted to be left alone. if he got that pass to see a red sox game he should have been in Hand cuffs under the STRICT supervision of a correction or probabtion officer.
Glad to see he's 17..
that way he'll be tried as an adult and will have life to practice his fellatio skills up at Cedar Junction. Kind of makes me glad he escaped the death penalty.
Let's not be uncivilized
If he's guilty of what they say, then he's very sick in the head or a total piece of shit. But the institutionalized rape of prisoners we have here is barbaric, and nothing to joke about.
How about?...
he's both? Oh, in this case, I feel comfortable thinking about this sociopath's future in those terms.
The sign that the idiot is
The sign that the idiot is flashing in the photo is, hey look at me, the liberal judge let me walk away from a DYS facility, check in with nobody, get a gun, murder someone, and run away from the crime scene.
I wish that one day, these liberal judges could feel some of the pain that they turn onto poor neighborhoods on a daily basis. The press "forgot" to mention what he was in DYS in the first place. I'll take a stab at it, something with a gun. The Red Sox, justice and common sense lost that night.
DYS to review its day-pass program
The Globe reports this is the first time DYS has ever had somebody on a pass accused of murder.
However, I wonder ....
> The Globe reports this is the first time DYS has ever had
> somebody on a pass accused of murder.
...how many have been charged with committing serious crimes?
DYS
Agreed. Obviously this is a tragedy and, regardless of whether this kid was mentally ill or not, he should be prosecuted and incarcertated for life, whether that be in a prison for the criminally insane or otherwise. However, the real question is why was he out. This is not the case of the unknown gang member who shoots someone. He was a known offender, and in the criminal justice system. Regardless of whether DYS has had someone commit a murder while they are out or not (nice to know they haven't I suppose) the question is whether the system has holes in it that allowed this to happen. Moreover, even if DYS worked properly (and assuming it could not be improved) the question is then whether it is worth reforming our criminal justice system more broadly to prevent such things from happening again. Better that a guilty person go free than an innocent be wrongly imprisoned is a good philiosophy for a system of justice, but when an innocent person is murdered because of it, it warrants thinking about whether we have gone too far.
I've seen an innocent person wrongly imprisoned
And it's much worse than ten guilty people going free.
thats not a Mozart st sign,
thats not a Mozart st sign, its Mission. it sucks that people have to lose their lives over nonsense.
Oh, yes, Mission
I linked to the Mozart thing because it was the same basic idea.
A DYS IS A FORM OF
A DYS IS A FORM OF INCARCERATION. KIDS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF YOUTH SERVICES ARE THERE FOR VERY SERIOUS CRIMINAL CHARGES.DONT BELIEVE ME FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF. JUST LIKE U WOULDNT LET THE CRAIGSLIST KILLER (EVEN THOUGH HES DEAD NOW) GO TO A RED SOX GAME BY HIMSELF RICARDO ARIAS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN HANDCUFFS AND SUPERVISED BY A CORRECTION OFFICER. CRIMINALS ARE AWARDED GOOD BEHAVIOR BUT THEY ARE STILL TREATED AS DANGEROUS. JUST BECAUSE ITS CALLED THE DEPARTMENT OF YOUTH SERVICES AND NOT A MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON OR SOUTH BAY CORRECTIONS DOESNT MEAN THE CHARGES THOSE KIDS ARE IN DYS FOR ARE LESS SERIOUS. may be we need to petition to reform the DYS system all together.
EVERYONE STFU
Free my bro Rizz & R.I.P antonito
But come on everyone in the bean if u clam a hood wen some1 comes up too u u gonna catch & who is on FB gettin pics u should do your research kuz homeboy from the vill is deff in a lot of pics wit them bitch as soft end nikka so everyone just STFU and I seen some nikka talkin about he's educated on the hood like nikka u can be educated u either lived it or just a wanna be who thinks he Knox something FREE Rizz nikkaz is holdin u down as I write this oh yea that pics not even in the hood u dum fuckz nikka we brixxxz like dum ass news people can't tell the diffence think kuz they went to harverd they smart lmao & get off DYS ass everyone they kno wat they doin kuz shit is real In there & my bro Rizz and all others from the hood will tell u Including myself MISSION run shit everywhere in every jail Free Rizz Tana Slick and canito
Sorry to nitpick
You accidentally spelled "research" correctly.
Translation
Free my brother, Ricardo "Rizz" Arias, and rest in peace Henry "Antonito" Mateo.
But, come on, everyone in Boston. If you claim to be "of a neighborhood" when someone comes up to you, then you are going to die by "catching" a bullet from a fired gun. Also, who goes on Facebook to retrieve pictures? You should do your research. The person from Villa Victoria who was killed is in a lot of pictures with members of a gang from that neighborhood. So everyone should stop talking.
I have also seen some people talking about how they understand what is going on in these neighborhoods. That person must be either living within these places or just pretending to understand them because those are the only ways to truly understand them.
Please free "Rizz". People are holding you down, "Rizz", as I write this.
Oh yeah, by the way, that picture you're using of "Rizz" was not even taken in the neighborhood, dummy. Whichever reporter found this picture should be smarter than to think they know everything because they attended Harvard for college. Ha ha. Also, everyone should leave the Department of Youth Services alone. They know what they are capable of doing given the very real situation they are dealing with in these neighborhoods.
My brother, "Rizz", and all of the others from his neighborhood will tell you if you ask, even myself, that Mission Hill gang members control the area including within the jails.
Free "Rizz", "Tana", "Slick", and "Canito"!
Thank you
Ms. Billingsley.
You're just upset
You're just cranky because he said you went to Harvard instead of Brandeis.
Ummmm
I think "said" is giving credit where none is due. His post was the equivalent of fingerpainted outrage.