Eagan: Sense of safety gone in shaken community

The parents from Wayland parked their big SUV outside the Dorchester Street apartment building in South Boston yesterday and loaded it with tables and drawers and flower vases and summer clothes. They were moving their daughter out of her second-floor apartment, a task familiar to parents of many 20-something kids.

But the reason for their move was anything but familiar, or happy. Amy Lord, 24, had lived on the building?s third floor. On Tuesday morning, on the way to the gym, she was attacked near her front door and beaten viciously in the building?s vestibule, where fingerprint powder yesterday still covered the walls and smudged the glass-paneled front door. Her body was found stabbed to death Tuesday afternoon.

?My daughter doesn?t feel comfortable here anymore,? the father said for his daughter, who knew Lord, moved in when she did, and did not want to speak. ?And we don?t feel comfortable having her here anymore.?

The father, who requested anonymity, recalled how the Lords and other families all met last Sept. 1 when they?d moved their daughters into the building. Four young women from Bentley, including Lord, lived above his daughter and her girlfriends. It was practically a move-in party with the Wayland father offering beer to the hot, sweaty and exhausted parents hauling couches and bed frames up two and three flights of stairs.

The father, who grew up in South Boston, remembered telling the suburban parents how the neighborhood has changed, attracting ever more young professionals like their kids who?d take the bus downtown to their first post-college jobs.

And the parents, including the Lords, felt good about the safety of the apartment building, the father said. It?s a free-standing building with Yoberry Frozen Yogurt on the first floor. The Junction, with its $11 build-your-own-burgers and Tuesday trivia nights, is next door. It?s just a block from South Boston?s busiest street, West Broadway, where new arrivals carried yoga mats yesterday and ate lunch open-air at Lincoln Tavern, with its tiled floors and tin ceilings.

?Scituate North,? the Wayland father said, is a nickname now for South Boston: so close to the water and a rebuilt waterfront. He does not blame his hometown. ?This could happen anywhere. It just happened in Wayland,? he said, referring to the 2011 murder of Lauren Astley by her ex-boyfriend.

Still, he was not going to leave his daughter in her apartment building with the fingerprint powder on the entry wall. He was not going to leave her to worry about a deranged killer lurking outside her front door, now a shrine to Amy Lord. Flowers. Candles. A teddy bear. A Bentley University athletic T-shirt. And nearby, two Boston police cars

?It?s just so immensely sad what happened. I?m not a big fan of three strikes and out,? he said of a law that requires the maximum sentence for three-time violent criminals. ?But I am a big fan of 10 strikes and out,? he said, referring to Edwin Alemany?s long, violent record. ?And I am livid that somebody let this (guy) slide,? said the father as he filled up his big SUV, and took his daughter home.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bostonherald/news/opinion/columnists/~3/L7LSo6LjN8s/eagan_sense_of_safety_gone_in_shaken_community

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