Deadly Silence

Killers live among us. They may be standing next to you at the convenience store, in the car behind you at the red light, walking by in the mall. They are free, allowed to kill again, because people who can put them behind bars refuse to talk with authorities, hiding behind a suffocating “code of silence.” A yearlong investigation by The Enterprise found that when killers are free, even when they aren’t pulling a trigger, they’re still stealing lives.

PART 1
Relatives of shooting victim Shawna Devine visit her grave in Brockton in 2005. (Craig Murray/The Enterprise)

Silence harms an entire community

When criminals roam free, everyone suffers

By Maureen Boyle, Enterprise staff writer
   Shawna Devine was in her car, waiting to leave a crowded lot outside a Brockton nightclub after one of her few nights out with friends.

VIDEO IN STORY

   Then gun shots rang out.
   Devine, 29, would be dead, struck by a stray bullet.
   Two of the three men accused of killing her would later go free after witnesses who first identified the gunmen recanted.READ THE REST OF THE STORY


Maritza Rodriguez, Shaian Colon’s mother, reflects on the unsolved shooting of her son in Brockton. (Craig Murray/The Enterprise)

Silent streets: Part 1

The search for a killer

By Maureen Boyle, Enterprise staff writer
   Larissa Rodrigues stood by her boyfriend’s bedside, praying the couple’s unborn child would be the miracle to pull him through.
   “Stay here,” she pleaded. “Stay here.”
   Shaian Colon, her boyfriend, was in the intensive care unit at Boston Medical Center, hooked to life support, after he had been shot twice — once in the head, once in the neck — on Brockton’s troubled Green Street.
   “Remember, you promised me,” she reminded him through tears. “You promised me you would never leave.” READ THE REST OF THE STORY