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Owner of North End restaurant wanted for shooting at somebody on Hanover Street
By adamg on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 9:14am
Boston Police report they are looking for Patrick Mendoza, 54, owner of Monica's Trattoria on Prince Street, on charges he tried to murder somebody outside Modern Pastry on Hanover Street around 11 p.m. on Wednesday.
The gunman missed his intended target but the bullet went through the window of the bakery - where nobody was injured.
Police say Mendoza is wanted for assault to murder by means of a dangerous weapon, illegal possession of a firearm, illegal possession of ammunition, discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling and witness intimidation. They add he is considered armed and dangerous.
The Boston Municipal Court criminal docket for yesterday lists Mendoza also being charged with illegal possession of a loaded firearm while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but law-enforcement spokespeople say they do not understand how that entry got into the system, since Mendoza has yet to be detained, let alone brought into court.
In a separate case, Mendoza is facing trial on Aug. 1, also in Boston Municipal Court, on a robbery charge, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office confirms.
The person who said he was shot at described the shooter as a skinny white man with braided gray hair, who fled on a "chopper" bicycle. WCVB has obtained surveillance video showing the man wheeling up to his intended target and taking a shot. The man then ducked behind the car he was standing next to in front of the Modern and ran away, as the shooter tried to take aim again.
Not long after the attempted shooting, police sent officers to check Monica's as well as Mendoza's home on North Bennet Street, but didn't find him. A BOLO issued by police said Mendoza might have ditched the bicycle and gotten into a white van registered to Monica's.
Mendoza was one of four North End restaurant owners who sued the city for $1.5 million apiece over fees the city charged North End restaurants to set up outdoor patios on city sidewalks and parking spaces in 2022. Their suit, which alleged Mayor Wu ordered the fees out of hatred for white, Italian men, was quietly dropped last month.
Innocent, etc.
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Boston Municipal Court docket listing for the case (JPG image) | 187.82 KB |
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Comments
That's very 1947.
That's very 1947.
I wish our streets were as
I wish our streets were as policed as UHub.
Huh?
What does that even mean?
Troll Bot is Glitching
It's regurgitating the same lame talking points over and over.
Hallucinating?
Hallucinating?
Allegedly the perp was "the owner of another restaurant"
Channel 5 doesn't mention any names or the other restaurant.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/apparent-bullet-pierces-window-of-modern-pa...
damn bikers
Those damn bikers.. always causing trouble
/snark
Cannoli
I'd kill for a good cannoli...
Original post updated
The owner of Monica's Trattoria was arraigned in Boston Municipal Court yesterday, at least on a charge of illegal gun possession.
throw away the key...
... and save the citizens of Boston the tax money and headache of dealing with this public nuisance. He does nothing but whine, piss off his neighbors, and act like a spoiled entitled brat when asked to do the bare minimum a citizen and business owner should do. Of course he had an unregistered gun. That squares with his "I'll take coronavirus over my business" bollix he spewed at the start of the pandemic closures.
My stupid friend is completely confused.
Could one of you kind commenters please explain it to him?
OK, let's try again ...
Somebody shot at somebody else on Hanover Street. He missed his target, the bullet went through a window at the Modern instead.
The person he missed IDed the guy and police immediately began looking for a specific individual.
They found him, and arrested him. The court docket currently shows a charge of illegal gun possession (well, I just updated that - not just an illegal gun, but an illegal loaded gun while he was under the influence of something).
He was arraigned yesterday, I'm still trying to find out what happened there.
Old man of questionable character...
Tooling around on a tricked out bike, makes a tool of himself yet again in the public domain, this time attempting to bust a cap into someone who knows him and can readily identify him.
Old man shot his shot, which was errant but not so errant as to avoid plate glass window at neighborhood tourist trap.
Old man later arraigned in advance of the rain for fucking around and now finding out.
Excuse me!
Mike's is the tourist trap! Modern is a delicious bakery.
Visit Meffid
We have our own Modern outlet. I'm not allowed to pick up my aunt at the airport without having stopped in for a canoli.
If I'm going to go to Medford for Italian pastries...
I'm going to LaCascia's.. I'm a bit biased though, as my brother, sister-in-law, and her brothers and parents (the LaCascias themselves) own the Burlington location. My brother started as a clean up kid in the early 1980s, I worked there in the early to late 1990s. The LaCascia family sold the Medford location in the early 1990s, but they're still affiliated; Medford bakes all the bread and rolls, Burlington does the pastries and cakes and they do an exchange once or twice a day as needed.
Fair enough
Modern is walking distance for me, though. My son lives in South Meffid and has discovered LaCascia's - if he can resist the nearby gravitational pull of French pastry at Collette.
Are these separate incidents?
Is the owner of Monica’s the one who (allegedly) shot out the window?
The way this is written makes it sound like 2 different incidents.
No
One incident. The shooting happened on Wednesday (7/12) and Patrick was arraigned yesterday on gun charges (7/13). I would imagine the police are still investigating so it is possible they could charge him with other offenses. I just want to know why he shot at Modern b/c it makes no sense.
I don't think he shot at the Modern specifically
He was aiming for a specific person, and missed.
One incident
It's just worded a little funny to update it with information about the arraignment
Adam's just being careful
If he posted that "Tom Smith", who has a habit of suing people for the hell if it, shot at someone and put a bullet into Modern, guess who might decide to file suit. It's safer to report just the facts (someone was shot at and someone was most definitely arraigned in court) and let the reader decide what 1 + 1 equals.
Basically, yes, thanks
Well, it's not so much I'm conscious of the risk of a lawsuit (although I should be) as the fact that based on what I know right now, I don't know if he's been charged (or not charged) for the gunfire (the two concerns, though, are related: If I'm accurate, it's harder to make a lawsuit stick).
The Massachusetts court system's online docket system is fairly bad for reporters and other members of the public when it comes to criminal records in the district courts (which BMC basically is): When you find a case (and you can't even look somebody up by name, you have to use other methods), it only lists one of the charges, not all of them, if there are more than one. So I can only state the suspect was charged with one specific thing while I await back an answer to the e-mail I sent to the Suffolk County DA's office about the arraignment.
My apologies for the confusion I've caused with this story.
I admire your diligence
Adam, I admire your diligence and dedication. I have been at many public meetings over the years and when I read the reporting, I often wonder if the reporter was at the same meeting. But whenever I see your byline, I have a much, much higher degree of confidence.
As for this story, I find it very curious that the entry you reported on got on the court's online docket when they apparently don't even have him in custody. Remembering the old days in this town, one would almost wonder if they had him, then somebody on the inside sprung him and now they are covering it up. Who was it that said truth be stranger than fiction?
In any case, you do great work and, I'm convinced, you always try to bring us the real story in a conscientious and thorough manner. So thank you and keep up the good work.
Flight risk?
I wonder if the rapid charges despite his not being in custody have to do with making sure he would be rapidly detained should he head to Logan Airport?
Yeah
No one would try to bring their loaded illegal guns to Logan
Leave the gun.
Take the cannoli.
Swell job he's doing
Swell job he's doing preserving the integrity of the neighborhood or whatever his reasoning was for profits over the very people he says are like (and sometimes are) FaMiLy. What a piece of work. I hope he loses his shirt for being an idiot. Thank god no one was hurt.
His getaway plan was,
His getaway plan was, presumably, to blend into the crowds of elderly men with braided hair riding customized bicycles that throng the North End every summer night. Just like the Thomas Cross Affair, except for a few important details.
Crown
ftfy
Story updated again
Police are looking for Mendoza but have NOT arrested him.
Also, nobody at either BPD or the DA's office seems to know how an entry for his case showed up in the Boston Municipal Court criminal docket yesterday, since, again, he hasn't been detained yet, let alone brought into court.
WBZ reports he will be charged with, among other things, assault to murder.
WCVB now has surveillance video from across the street, showing the attempted shooting.
Attempted murder
The shooting was successful. There's a bullet hole in Modern and two bullets astray in the streets somewhere. What was only attempted was the murder.
Story updated yet again
Now that BPD has come out with a statement on what Mendoza is wanted for specifically.
Weird. The surveillance
Weird. The surveillance footage seems clear enough to allow the perp to be identified by people who know him.
Bringing my observations from the biking world; this is definitely not a “chopper” type bike as the witness reported. Looks like an older model single-speed, much favored by bike messengers and hipsters in the 90's and early 2000s. It is operated in freewheel mode (not fixed gear) which was offensive to fixed gear purists at a time when these things mattered. It has 27” or 700 C wheels and a frame size 54 to 56 cm. The rider is in the 5' 10" range and appears to be quite capable and confident with his bike handling; he's likely ridden it a decent amount before.
Also
If you look at the way he dismounts the bike, you can tell information about his name...like it probably has initials PM...like Patrick Mendoza or something like that.
Regardless of type ...
A lot of people in the North End were familiar with him riding it around - police even quickly obtained video of him riding it around the day before the shooting.
Choppah
Disappointing. I watched the video specifically to see the chopper.
The irony here is that
The irony here is that Battenfield at the Herald wrote a story just today to make the Wu Administration look bad for providing BPD a list of people of whom they were fearful (he compared it to Nixon's enemies list). And Mendoza and his brother were among them!
It’s almost as if keeping a
It’s almost as if keeping a list of people who are likely to be violent, like this asshole, isn’t a bad thing.
Kind of like the BRIC gang database.
The employees are the nicest,
The employees are the nicest, hardest working, people who brightened people's days. I hope they will be okay.