The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld Harold Parker's first-degree murder conviction for the 2001 murder of Io Nachtwey, a homeless woman from Hawaii who was stabbed and then beaten in the head with nunchucks before her body was dumped into the Charles from the Grand Junction railroad bridge over the Charles River.

Parker was one of four men who rounded up several homeless people at the Pit in Harvard Square as members of what was supposed to be a Crips gang but turned out to be a front for the rival Latin Kings gang. The homeless people were ordered to go out on robbery "missions," but Parker and the other three kept Nachtwey with them at a Braintree motel, at least until the whole scheme fell apart when some of the homeless people realized what was going on and planned to rebel.

Parker and the others decided to kill Nachtwey to keep her from fingering them; Parker did not plunge the knife into her, but was at the scene when she was killed and did nothing to stop her death, according to the SJC recounting of the case:

As the women walked along the tracks of a railroad bridge that spanned the Charles River, Ismael shouted "green light." As planned, Alleyne and White pulled the victim to the ground; Davenport approached and stabbed the victim repeatedly, and then Luis ran to them and struck the victim in the head several times with a pair of "nunchucks." Luis and Davenport then threw the victim's body into the Charles River.

The defendant and others were arrested hours later for kidnapping another individual whom they believed had turned against them. While in custody, the defendant was questioned about the victim's death. Among other things, the defendant told investigators that he knew that the victim would be killed and was against it, but that other members threatened to kill him and stripped him of his rank in the gang. He also stated that he was approximately twenty feet away from where the victim was killed. Later in the interview, when asked if he killed the victim, he responded, "You don't understand that someone at my level doesn't have to do any dirt work," and "[W]hen it comes to trial your witnesses won't make it."

In its ruling, the state's highest court ruled neither prosecutors nor the trial judge did anything wrong and that it therefore had no reason to overturn the verdict, which brought with it a mandatory sentence of life without parole. In 2012, the court also upheld Parker's sentence - and that of the three other men who were convicted.

Only thick layers of clothing saved a jogger from injury when an unleashed dog attacked her on the grounds of Jamaica Plain's Eliot School Wednesday evening, school Executive Director Abigail Norman reports.

In a posting in the Jamaica Plain Facebook group, an exasperated Norman says she's been seeing more and more dog owners just let their pets run wild in the yard of the school, which runs crafts and fine-arts classes, and which has long let the public use its yard and path:

We at the school have increasingly met with indifference, hostility and even outright aggression when we ask neighbors politely to leash their dogs. Adults have refused to leash their dogs, yelled at us and threatened us. We do have many respectful dog owners, but we increasingly encounter those who appear to have little ability to follow rules or behave nicely.

This is an issue of civility and shared space. It is also a very serious safety issue. We are tempted to banish dogs from our yard, in fear that a truly serious tragedy might take place. However, we do not have the resources at this time to hire a security guard to enforce either a ban or our leash rule.

We must count on you, our neighbors. Please leash your dogs, and, if you see others with dogs off-leash in our yard, please ask them to leash their dogs.

Norman posted the jogger's account of what happened around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday:

[A]s I was jogging from my home on Holbrook St. to go pick up my daughter at the Footlight Club, I was attacked by someone's off-leash dog in the Eliot School yard. Clearly the dog took my running as a threat because it charged me as soon as I entered the gate. Its owner was on her phone quite a distance away and she finally turned around when I started screaming. Had I not been wearing so much clothing, the dog surely would have broken skin in multiple places. The owner wasn't able to get her dog under control initially and it came running at me again for a second attack after eluding its owner. When she finally got its collar, I was so shocked I couldn't speak and just started moving away from them. She didn't ask if I was OK or say sorry and just started speaking sweetly to her dog. I finally said, 'Please leash your dog before I come back through with my daughter in a few minutes,' and, by the time we did, she and the dog were gone.

Norman writes:

Dog owners MUST keep dogs leashed in the Eliot School yard. We have a sign reminding visitors of this at each of our three gates. The Eliot School is not a public park. It is private property. The school keeps its yard open as a favor to the neighborhood. We expect neighbors to value this wonderful resource, and to respect both the school and all others who share the space.

A group of dog owners are trying to persuade DCR to use some of its parkland along the Charles River for an area where dogs could play and roam.

The department, which recently announced actual plans to turn part of the Southwest Corridor into a dog park, should look at the area between the Harvard Business School and the IHOP for a location, according to an online petition.

Christopher Arena, one of the leaders of the effort, is looking to meet next week with DCR, state Rep. Kevin Honan and Harvard to try to work out how to move forward.

As the petition notes:

Currently, the closest fully fenced dog parks adjacent to this neighborhood are the Tudor Street Dog park in Cambridge (3 miles), Hunnewell on the Newton/Brighton line (2 miles), and the Mansfield Street dog park (not maintained, not grass, privately owned).