Cops: Gang war sparked JP shootout 3 dead shatters calm at pizzeria

Cops: Gang war sparked JP shootout
3 dead shatters calm at pizzeria
By Richard Weir  |   Tuesday, November 23, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage

Photo by Angela Rowlings
An apparent grudge match between warring gang members left three men dead, police and friends said yesterday as a usually tranquil Jamaica Plain neighborhood reeled in the wake of the pizza-parlor blood bath.

“We have not seen this kind of violence around here for a long time. I have not seen it ever in the center part of JP,” said state Rep. Liz Malia, a 40-year Jamaica Plain resident, as she sat at a table yesterday inside the popular Same Old Place pizza shop — scene of Sunday’s deadly rampage.

The outbreak of violence in the family-friendly Centre Street area spurred vows of a quick response by law enforcement.

“That type of incident is unusual in a typically quiet neighborhood. However, incidents like that are not acceptable on any street in the city,” said BPD spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll, adding that any “individuals who associate with these three should anticipate a significant amount of aggressive enforcement coming their way.”

Gangs have long warred in the Jackson and Egleston Square areas of Jamaica Plain, but the neighborhood’s gentrified downtown has been immune from shootouts.

That changed around 7:30 p.m. Sunday, when members of rivaling blocks stumbled across each other at the scruffy, 37-year-old pizzeria, police said.

One slug left a spider’s web of cracks in a mirrored wall, another bullet pierced a wall separating the dining area from the kitchen and a third shattered the restaurant’s window.

That bullet — or shrapnel — grazed the wife of Boston labor lawyer Alan Shapiro, who happened to be walking nearby with two other women.

She’s fine,” said Shapiro, adding his wife — whose name is being withheld by the Herald at the request of her family — was grazed but treated and released from Faulkner Hospital.

Pizza shop owner Fred Ciampa, who was not working, said his staff told him they did not know the three men involved in the fight before.

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” he said. “We’re like an institution here. Everybody knows us.”

Boston police released few details yesterday on what triggered the outburst, other than that all three male victims had arrest records and were involved in gangs.

“The altercation began inside and made its way outside,” Driscoll said. “One individual pulled out a knife. The other individual pulled out a gun and was able to shoot the two other individuals.”

The 20-year-old who wielded the knife, identified by his friends and a police source as Johnnel “Bo” Cruz Nova of Jamaica Plain, managed to fatally stab his 20-year-old foe before that man fatally shot him and mortally wounded his 28-year-old friend.

Eric Vila, 21, a tattoo artist, said he bumped into Cruz Nova as the two friends ordered pizza at Same Old Place moments before the shootings. They talked about expanding the tattoo of a .38 snub-nosed revolver on his friend’s right arm.

“He told me, ‘I’m trying to do my whole arm. I want to put ‘Money, respect, power, with a whole bunch of gunsmoke. Can you do that?’ I told him no problem. See me tomorrow. ... I said, ‘You be careful,’ ” recalled Vila, who left the pizzeria to go to a 7-Eleven, only to get a phone call minutes later that his pal had been shot.

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