Beacon Hill resident John Maione, who works at the Capitol Coffee House on Bowdoin Street, enjoyed playing lacrosse in the warm weather on Boston Common last Saturday. For Maione, who spent almost four months in a coma after a serious motorcycle accident a year and a half ago, this first time playing was extra special.
Joy Street Rapist pleads guilty; Gets 20 years by Suzanne Besser
The brutal rapist who frightened Beacon Hill women two years ago and caused them to rally together in self-defense will spend up to 20 years in prison.
On Tuesday, the day his trial was to begin, the defendant, 18-year-old-Zaquan Martin of Roxbury, pled guilty to three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of armed robbery, two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and single counts of home invasion and unlawfully carrying a firearm. He was sentenced in Boston Juvenile Court to 16 to 20 years in state prison, plus an additional ten years of probation to be served upon his release, according to court documents obtained by The Times.
Because of the severity of the crime, a grand jury had indicted Martin under the youthful offender statute, which exposed him to the same potential punishment an adult would receive if convicted. Prosecutors said Martin approached the victim as she entered her Joy Street apartment building on the evening of November 14 and forced her inside at gunpoint, demanding money. After she turned over a small amount of cash, he repeatedly raped her, also at gunpoint, and tied her up. Moments later, her roommate entered the home, was confronted by Martin and tied up as well. Before fleeing the scene, he stole several personal items belonging to both victims.
He was arrested three days later in his home, where the personal items and a handgun were found, and charged with the crimes. During the time before his arrest, the neighborhood was uneasy, so Dina M. A. Moeller, a neighbor of the victims, organized a meeting to help women cope with the tragedy. That meeting, held at 74 Joy Street in conjunction with the safety committee of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, was packed with men and women who heard safety tips and methods of self defense from the Boston Police Department.
“The meeting had the impact I wanted,” remembered Moeller. “It was a great forum to get together and air our concerns.”
Moeller and other Joy Street residents haven’t forgotten the crime. “It was so traumatic and you never forget a thing like that,” Moeller said. “It was a wake-up call. We sometimes tell new neighbors not to be fooled by the brick sidewalks and gas lamps. This is an urban area.”
When Betsey Hedges moved to Otis Place from suburban Connecticut last summer, she had quite a welcome.
It was not the welcome she wanted. It was from rats, ones so bold they walked right up the front steps.
Hedges was surprised and dismayed to find Beacon Hill’s streets and sidewalks far dirtier than those in New York City, where she had previously worked.
Here, she hears dogs barking at rats as they scattered along the streets at dusk. Once she spotted a rat with fifteen babies parading across Otis Place, in true “Make Way for Ducklings” fashion.
Worse yet, several times since Hedges has lived in the two-story unit they rent, rats have taken bites out of avocados, bananas and tomatoes that they left on the windowsill to ripen.
This unfortunate welcome has prompted Hedges to band with neighbors in a fight against the nasty rodents. “It’s survival of the fittest, and I think they are getting to be the fittest,” she said. “We need to take away what they like and to keep the drains clean.”
That means keeping the trash, the rats’ main source of food, away them by placing it on the street on the morning of collection rather than the night before. It also means sweeping the streets and sidewalks frequently, and getting the city to bait the catch basins frequently. That’s what Otis Place residents are now doing to keep the rats away.
These are the same measures long advocated by the Inspectional Services Department and the Beacon Hill Civic Association’s Clean Beacon Hill Committee, although too often they fall on deaf ears. Chairman Peter Begley of Myrtle Street said, while the rat problems are typically worse on the flat of the Hill because of the water there, there appears to be an increase in rat sightings throughout the Hill this winter. “I think they are out and about more this winter,” he said. “We’ve seen rats across the Hill from Chestnut and Walnut streets to Temple Street. Recently I was walking on Charles Street near the Boston Common and saw the ground literally moving with the presence of rats scurrying around.”
Residents of Chestnut Street have had their share of bothersome rats as well. Last spring there was a huge influx when Boston Water and Sewer was working on the corner of Chestnut and Charles streets, according to Chestnut Street resident Paula O’Keeffe. This winter, though, the problems have been more severe on neighboring Branch Street, she said, where rats are spotted running up and down the street, often chewing under garage doors and turning over plants.
Ulla Sullivan, who has lived on Acorn Street since 1998, said she has never seen so many rats. “At dusk, they come running down the street and burrow under garden doors of homes on Mount Vernon Street,” she said.
On a recent trash day, Sullivan discovered a sandwich with tooth marks on it that had been dragged under another garden door. As for the catch basin located at Chestnut and West Cedar streets, Sullivan said you just have to wait five minutes and you’ll see them there.
Sullivan agrees with Bagley and Hedges that Beacon Hill has a big problem here but people do not recognize it. “You notice things more when you first move in,” said Hedges. “After a while, people start to get used to them and overlook them. But, we are all being overrun. As a community, we have to do more with cleaning the neighborhood up.”
Residents should report rat sightings immediately to Rodent Control, Inspectional Service Department, at 617-635-5352.
It was cold last week, and the only work that was done was electrical. John Lepore, who runs the project for Mass. Highway, said that Best Electric missed only a day and a half.
The electricians were obvious at several intersections, fiddling with wires and testing the equipment. The North Grove traffic lights passed their tests and Lepore predicts that they will be working some time this week.
In prior weeks, the optimistic Lepore has predicted success that hasn’t been achieved. He said that one glitch about six weeks ago was that the wrong camera brackets arrived on the site and he had to send them back for the right ones.
He said he can’t “turn over the intersection to the city,” in other words, make it fully operable, until everything is working perfectly.
Lepore said that one problem last fall with the traffic lights was that the contractor and the sub-contractor had a dispute over pay, which was finally resolved.
Then the company that programs the controls demanded pay in advance, which is something that Lepore, who runs taxpayer-funded projects, cannot do. The company had signed a contract and supposedly understood the policy. It took time to replace that company with Ocean State, which is scheduled now to do program controls this week.
The project has been fraught with such difficulties.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority, in coordination with the Downtown Crossing Association and five consultants, has come up with a plan to change conditions around the intersection of Washington, Summer and Winter streets into something Bostonians can be proud of.
The plan covers an area from Tremont Street southeast into the Financial District and from Court Street southwest to Boylston/Essex.
The plan is what one might expect from the “walking city” — making the area more pedestrian friendly, improving storefronts and making them more transparent, bringing restaurant life out to the sidewalk, and reaching out to appropriate retailers who would bring in the crowds. It’s good nuts-and-bolts city planning.
This effort is not the first, but it is important. This intersection is in the center of 42,000 residents — i.e. our readers — who could easily walk to this district, shop there, meet friends, have dinner and generally enjoy a part of the city. But now they don’t, unless it’s for work or an appointment with a banker or a dentist.
The area is unwelcoming because it seems to have been taken over by kids who lurk about and look like they should be in school. In the heart of the district, the jewelers, a couple of camera shops, the Brattle Book Shop, serve a need and might be attractive, but these places are surrounded by ugly stores with little draw, especially now that Filene’s is gone.
Despite the drawbacks and the previous failed efforts, this initiative may succeed. New heavy hitters are involved, for one thing. A recent meeting called by the BRA to discuss the plan drew an impressive crowd that included such real estate powerhouses as Harold Brown and John Hynes. Hynes, as part of the joint venture that plans to raise a tower of more than a million square feet over the former Filene’s store, has much at stake in this district. He has an ability to make things happen and would seem a natural leader in the district’s improvement. He might be able to persuade owners who have neglected their stores to make changes.
Other developers, Tony Pangaro with Millennium and Robert Epstein of the Abbey Group, Boston Proper residents themselves, have projects in the works on the south and the north sections of this district. They understand city life. They too could pressure recalcitrant owners. Their developments should help bring a critical mass of new residents and new incentive for change.
While the district needs residents, it isn’t clear how many of them should be students. Suffolk University has embarked on a study to find out where to locate future dorms, and this area is under consideration.
But Suffolk and Emerson College students already occupy the southern end of the district. Too many students were perceived by Beacon Hill residents as a threat to the livability of that neighborhood. Too many students in this incipient neighborhood could stunt its service to the rest of the city. The BRA will have to delicately manage this balance.
The consultants claimed this area is unique in an American city, busy and filled with people, but also not serving those people well. They claimed there is no analogy that could be made, even though they mention a few places that have some similar elements.
But in their international reach, they miss something at home. Their goal describes one end of a spectrum that already exists — right here in Boston. Active neighborhoods, a good street life, appealing retail shops, good restaurants, a non-threatening atmosphere, lots of happy residents with services all around them. That accurately describes the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the North End, and Chinatown. In all its surrounding neighborhoods, the consultants’ vision for Downtown Crossing is more or less what life is like. Some neighborhoods are quieter, some are more active. Some have a bigger scale, some smaller.
So let’s make Downtown Crossing a typical Boston neighborhood — just one that has its own scale and features. That’s how it will succeed. That is how it will best contribute to the city as a whole.
AD2 Freddie Rivera, SK1 Rahsan Porter and BM3 Brian Hill took a break on Boston Common from the festivities surrounding the aircraft carrier USS John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s last visit to Boston before being decommissioned this spring.
Things are getting a lot lighter on Beacon Hill, and it’s not only because daylight savings time began this weekend.
Last Friday the 7,200 gas lamp mantles that were ordered by the city to replace this year’s crop of broken ones that kept the streets in the dark arrived from India. Lighting crews will start work immediately on Beacon Hill and in the Back Bay and Charlestown, according to Jennifer Mehigan, the mayor’s deputy press secretary. She anticipates the work will be completed in five to six weeks, assuming that the weather cooperates.
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