Loss of innocence in a Dorchester gym

Somebody's Daughter reports her father's house is right next to the John Marshall School in Dorchester, where an alleged gang member was shot the other night. She says he was confused because he didn't hear anything - no gunfire, no screams, no ambulance. She says she's confused, too, but for a different reason:

... I sat at my son's mini desk in his mini chair and tried to process it all. Shot inside a school? An elementary school? What do these parents tell their babies? How do you explain to your six year old why the media is outside of his school? While most six-year olds grapple with the concept of death, for too many kids, death via violence has become the norm.

So the small place where children can escape the struggle that is their life, get fed regularly, get heat and an education, is now tainted. A crime scene. They'll run around and laugh in a gym that was filled with running and screaming of a different kind merely hours before. ...