City Councilor Tito Jackson, who represents the area of Saturday’s shooting, expressed dismay during a visit to the scene on Winslow Street.

And for the fourth time in 10 days, Roxbury residents watched as police searched for clues in another shooting in their neighborhood. The girl, who was shot in the hand and leg and is expected to survive, was the second child among those victims, after a 9-year-old was injured last Sunday.

A 2-year-old girl in a car seat was shot Saturday, police said, after a man riding a motor scooter misfired in an attempt to hit her father as he stood outside of the vehicle on a Roxbury street.


“It’s absolutely unacceptable that a young person in broad daylight can’t just be a child,’ Jackson said. “A 2-year-old should never be in harm’s way in a neighborhood like this.”

Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said the girl was checked into a hospital by her father, who Evans said is involved in gang activity and well-known to police.

Police did not identify the girl or the father.

“He is not being cooperative, at all . . . That’s the frustration we have,” said Evans, who did not say how the girl’s father got to the hospital. “He did not wait for an ambulance.”

Police were alerted to the shooting just before 4 p.m., and Evans said they are looking for a man who was riding a black-and-white scooter. The young girl is being treated at Boston Medical Center.

“We believe it’s the same bullet that went through her hand and went through to her thigh,” he said. There was also a cut under her eye, he said. “We don’t know if it was glass, or a graze.

“The good news is, it’s a through-and-through wound, that didn’t hit anything, so she is going to be fine,” Evans added.


Dorothy Fleming, who has lived in the neighborhood for about five years, heard gunfire on Saturday and afterward found a bullet hole in her windshield.

The discovery “scared the hell out of me,” she said.

“Something’s got to change,” she said, noting that she no longer feels safe in the neighborhood.

Natalie Pagan, who works at the Mondonguito grocery store on Dudley Street and lives in the neighborhood, also said she heard a couple of gunshots and then saw police officers rushing outside the store.

She’s concerned about the level of violence and worries about the safety of children in the area. But she believes Boston police are doing their best to protect the neighborhood.

“They’re patrolling, they’re looking out,” Pagan said of police. “I know police are doing everything they can.”

The shooting left community members frustrated as they worked to put a halt to violence in Boston.

“This is not just a Roxbury issue . . . this is happening across the city,” said Monica Cannon, a mother of five who works with at-risk teens, noting that every neighborhood in Boston has a stake in ending violence.

Cannon had put together a news conference in the days after the 9-year-old girl was shot last Sunday, calling for an end to the violence. That child was hospitalized early last Sunday after she was hit by gunfire while playing at a party in the Alice Taylor Public Housing Development.



The shooting of the 9-year-old girl happened the same weekend as the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Carlos Lind on Columbus Avenue. No one has been arrested.


Earlier that week, on Oct. 6, 20-year-old Jesse Dieusinor, of Florida, was fatally shot at Zeigler and Dearborn streets in Roxbury.

Cannon said community members need to “stand up for ourselves” and engage with neighbors and young people to discourage people from committing acts of violence.

She also said city and community leaders need to come together and cooperate on ways to encourage people to leave violence behind — and support them when they do.

But on Saturday, Cannon’s focus was on the 2-year-old girl who was shot.

“Right now, I’m just praying,” said Cannon.

Rufus Faulk, program director for the Boston TenPoint Coalition, which fights to end violence in Boston, said the latest shooting is traumatic for residents.

“When a shooting happens in our neighborhood, it impacts the victims, but it also impacts the neighbors,” he said.

Faulk wants all Roxbury residents to take responsibility for shaping their neighborhood and making it the community they want it to be.

Together, they can send a message that no one is alone in their grief or in fighting for peace, he said.

“It’s going to take every individual from every walk of life actually doing their part and making an effort to get out there and rebuild the community,” he said. “It’s going to take Roxbury to save Roxbury.”

Correspondents Nicole Fleming and Felicia Gans contributed to this report.