• Art Jahnke

    Senior Contributing Editor

    Art Janke

    Art Jahnke began his career at the Real Paper, a Boston area alternative weekly. He has worked as a writer and editor at Boston Magazine, web editorial director at CXO Media, and executive editor in Marketing & Communications at Boston University, where his work was honored with many awards. Profile

Comments & Discussion

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There are 63 comments on Police Probe Allston Murder

  1. I’m a BU grad student who lives in this same neighborhood about a block away, and in 2.5 years this is the first crime incident that we have ever had. This part of Comm. Ave. on the Allston/ Brighton line is actually very safe, mostly grad student, young working professionals, and young families. It isn’t like the other parts of Allston off Brighton Ave the is consumed with undergrad parties and houses.

    My heart goes out to this student and his family, but other student’s should not be afraid to live here just because of this one isolated incident. BU law, medicine, and other grad students will continue to live in this neighborhood. Furthermore, we will reach out to each other, and our non-BU neighbors, to pray for the victim’s family as we all find peace during this trying time.

    1. Good morning Anonymous,

      It’s sad we only talk about things only when the violence is reported that day, then like nothing happen it goes away.

      To keep stories alive we all need to ban together as a community everyday of the week to fight for change.
      if you don’t speak up no one will hear you!

  2. This is so sad – my condolences go out to the family and friends of this student. I will keep them in my thoughts and prayers.

    I also live a couple blocks away (since Sept 2010), and this is the first I have heard of violent crime in the area. Brighton is a very quiet and nice area of Boston. And I have never heard of Allston being unsafe – rowdy and loud with its parties at times, yes, but not dangerous if you are careful. I am also interested to hear more about this crime as the investigation continues. “Isolated” to what exactly? As far as I’m concerned, as of right now, there’s a shooter still on the loose. Hopefully, the police will find the shooter and justice will be served for this student’s family.

  3. Though I don’t agree that this area–Allston broadly taken–is safe, what strikes me more is how completely it fails to approximate anything like a community.

    It’s transient, physically ugly, dirty…it’s just a really low-quality-of-life place to live. There’s so much better in the world, and you needn’t be a millionaire to live there.

    Can’t wait to leave. Area is trash.

  4. How about Police Bike Patrol around the Allston area, or Special K-9 unit

    Also a good idea is to put cameras on the traffic lights in the area, this will at least give Police a better chance seeing the gunman running or driving away from crime seen.

    another possible Idea is to help raise money for Merchants in the area to get cameras in front of the stores to help nab these season criminals.
    we need all the eyes we can get.

  5. is it true that the emergency notification system was never used? what if this was the start of a columbine/virginia tech like incident? like the previous poster said, a shooter is on the loose..where was the lockdown and emergency text system?

    1. No, that isn’t true. I’m a BU undergrad and I received emergency texts from BU the next day. (Granted, yes, the next day, not at 2:30 AM when this happened, but still. The system was used.)

    2. This was a murder in a residential part of the city of Allston. It wasn’t on the BU campus. It would be something like sounding the alarm @ NYU if someone was shot in Brooklyn.

      ‘Safe’ is apparently a relative word. I lived in Allston-Brighton for years and while I always felt the main roads were ‘city safe’ – a lot of the side streets can get sketchy real fast. All you have to do is just check out the collection of derelicts getting off the T at this spot. I would’ve never chosen to live in that area. Unfortunately a lot of students probably don’t know the area as well and have to go with the cheapest option or the advice of a realtor that might not be telling them the whole truth about things.

      1. giving us notification at noon the next day is NOT appropriate, it should of been broadcast as soon as police knew it was a BU student…brooklyn is at least 4 or 5 miles from NYU including a body of water

        1. It wasn’t the next day, it was not even 10 hours later, during which time most students were asleep. No one knows when the person was positively identified as a BU student, nor when BU was informed. You can’t send out an alert every time something happens in Allston. The Brooklyn analogy is poor, but the intersection where this happened is a mile from campus, and despite being populated by a lot of BU students, is not at all considered a part of campus, thus the crime could have been totally unrelated. There are a lot of things to look at here with respect to where BU falls short on student safety, the response time on the alert is not one of them.

          1. Agreed. The Emergency Alert went out at noon, the earliest article I can find was reported about an hour before. There is also a certain level of discretion that is needed when informing the family and relatives. Though we all would have wanted an emergency alert 30 minutes after it happened, it wasn’t a campus related crime.

          2. Jane Doe ( obviously the BU Police!): like h–ll it wasnt a campus related crime why are we even talking about it than? How is sending out a text message stating “BU student shot in Allston, assailant unknown , details to follow” how is that going to violate any families privacy? Let me ask you something, suppose the BU police knew it was a student at lets say 400 am, than lets suppose some chem major pulling an all nighter was walkng home and encountered the shooter, unknowingly..do you think he would of taken more precautions? a tragedy would of potentially happened…again, this time a tragedy which could of been prevented…

          3. OK – if you don’t like Brooklyn, just pick a part of Manhattan that is closer – the point remains the same and really you should be smart enough to figure this out yourself.

          4. firstoff NYC has a citizen to police officer ratio of 200 to 1 whereas boston has about 1 police officer for every 350 citizens, this excludes the fact that NYPD by and large is not repsonsible for writing traffic tickets etc, and has, in manhattan essentially 100 percent video surveillance, you have what is essence a safer city.

        2. Just a minor correction: NYU actually has a campus in Downtown Brooklyn, so, in fact, it is the same thing as BU and Allston, dependent on what part of the borough the shooting is to have hypothetically occurred.

    3. The Emergency Alert system wouldn’t be used until campus was alerted that a student was involved which likely wasn’t until the next day. Boston Police are not going to activate the system themselves. They needed to identify the person and then alert the campus. Thus the delay in alert. If this happened on campus or if Campus Police were involved at the scene, the alert likely would have gone off immediately.

      1. so what you are saying is that BU police werent notified or were not at the scene until noon the next day? I doubt that, as far as identifying the victim, this is usually done immediately during the “canvas”, in this case students who live in the neighborhood and were woken by the cop cars identified the victim almost immediately

        1. Again, that street is not BUPD jurisdiction, so no, they wouldn’t be called there. You’re arguing over them alerting sleeping students all over campus at 3 am (if they even knew then, which its highly likely they didn’t) as opposed to in the morning, when they more than likely confirmed with BPD that the victim was a student. This is a non-issue with respect to this incident.

  6. I strongly disagree with the comments referring to Allston as “safe.” My close friend was robbed by two younger kids on Allston St. over the summer, and there was a shooting on Chester just before the beginning of the new year. Two years ago, someone was murdered waiting outside of the Blanchard’s liquor store. As much as I appreciate the low rent I’ve been paying the last three years, this tragedy should serve as a reminder that you get what you pay for, and often times that means sacrificing safety for affordable housing. If this heinous crime has taught us anything, it’s that students need to stick together now more than ever, and report anything suspicious immediately to the Boston police.

    1. I agree. Allston IS NOT SAFE.

      I lived at Warren and Comm Ave when I first moved to Boston, right on the other side of Ringer Park. Second month I lived there, I heard the security door to my apartment shattered. Turns out the guy who tried to rob the pizza joint around the corner was trying to hide in my building. Nice. While living there I was followed home by creepy people four times times, and was grabbed once right at the Griggs Street stop. I was able to fight the person off, but it took the cops 20 minutes to show up and they told me right then they probably wouldn’t catch the guy since this type of thing happens quite often. After that I moved the hell out of that area.

      Since I’ve lived here closer to West Campus there have been numerous stabbings in the Harvard/Brighton intersection, including the serial stabber in front of that Tedeschi and what used to be the Kells. Two years ago I saw a bunch of guys jump out of a car and beat someone on Gardener Street. I knew of people on Gardener whose entire building was burglarized, and this past September the folks on the first floor of my building were robbed. Just last month my friend who lives by Ringer said two teenaged girls came running out of the park and said they were sexually assaulted.

      Whoever says Allston is safe is full of it.

      (like the BPD, see: http://tinyurl.com/bm879kd)

  7. Realistically, BU police should patrol the area of Allston more frequently at night on the weekdays. While they have been focusing all of their efforts on the weekends to break up parties and prevent noise disruptions, they should also be watching over the area much more extensively on the weekdays after dark to assure that nothing like this happens again. Allston is on a dangerous place because we have defined it as such. If we have police patrol the streets on the weekdays when the unsuspecting lone wanderer is out and less on the weekends when the groups of students less likely to be bothered are out, I truly believe that we can start to change our view of Allston as a slightly safer place.

  8. Put in BU Shuttle stops in Allston! How hard would it be for the BUS to continue down Brighton Ave and then loop back around Harvard to Comm Ave to then head back towards campus?

    Once a bus already is in service, it has the fixed expense of a driver and then variable cost of an extra mile or two is incredibly minimal.

    Also, many medical students live in Allston. If your BUS route already includes going to and from the medical campus, wouldn’t it make sense to drop the students off where they actually live rather than only going as far as StuVi II?

    1. That is definitely a great idea but i do not think it will evet happen. See the BUS does not drive to students’ residense or living areas. Its concern only BU campus so folks can get to class.

  9. This tragedy has scared me a lot. I’m a BU senior and I frequently walk through Allston to get to friends apartments and also to Tavern in the Square. While I don’t consider Allston a “good” area, I’ve never felt very unsafe in it. Honestly I’d expect a crime like this to occur on the BU Medical Campus which is much worse and I always feel in danger there. Still, my heart goes out to his friends and family and I’ll definitely think twice before walking there alone anymore. I used to just think I’d be fine as long as I wasn’t listening to my ipod or on the phone, paying attention to my surroundings.

  10. I have lived about a block from where this incident happened on the south side of comm ave for two years. Both this murder and the comments about Allston being unsafe come to me as a huge surprise. Not once in the entirety of my stay here have I felt unsafe or threatened in any way, shape or form. This may be because I rarely go near ringer park and my street is pretty well lit. As is true everywhere in Boston, the feeling of a neighborhood can change dramatically from block to block (for better or for worse). So, I think it may not be fare to generalize all of Allston as unsafe but perhaps pay more attention to spots like ringer park, brighton and harvard, etc.

    Also, being able to provide anecdotal evidence of a crime does nothing to demonstrate how high the crime rate is in Allston compared to other areas in and outside of Boston. For that you need to see statistics and crime reports. Just as I don’t think anyone would say murders are a big problem in Allston because of the single incident yesterday, the inevitable occasional crime does not mean Allston necessarily has a “crime problem”.

  11. The BUPD’s jurisdiction does not extend to this area (Glenville Ave./Allston Street). The Boston PD has this responsibility and have been actually hostile toward a BUPD presence, even in the nasty area adjacent to the campus (rear of Star Market/Ashford St./Gardner St.) which the BUPD DOES incorporate in their patrol area.

    Where the BUPD does have jurisdiction is on the BU Medical Campus; they are there from 8 AM to midnight, but only do periodic drive-throughs from midnight to 8 AM, and on weekends. This is an area where the University COULD provide more coverage, and provide the funding to the BUPD to hire the officers necessary to have a 24 hour/day/7 days/week presence. At least this area is within the University’s ability to better protect.

  12. I know Allston very well – grew up in Brookline, went to BU, had friends who lived actually one block from where this happened, and I lived there myself for 3 years. It has its sketchy blocks, and its party blocks, but violent crime? Pretty unusual. If you’re expecting it to be a suburban community, IT IS NOT. And it was never set up to be – communities are built around families and parks and coffee shops – very little of which Allston has.
    Also, unless something has changed, this is NOT a part of the BU campus, and it can’t be expected that BUPD go out of their way to patrol Allston – they really don’t have any jurisdiction there anyway (although I assume they would stop a murder in progress if they saw it). Anyway, just had to stand up for Allston a bit – if you want manicured lawns and caviar picnics in the park, go to Wellesley, people.

  13. A lot of people would like to be in areas like Wellesley, Brookline, Beacon Hill etc. but can’t afford it when they are in college or just starting out their careers and not making much money.

  14. I’m pretty sure I live one building away from this incident, on Glenville Ave. Today, I tried to find 139 Allston st. I could not find this number anywhere up and down Allston st.

    Maybe it was reported incorrectly? 139 Glenville Ave exists, and I think it is the correct address. Also, the photo shows a building, which is on Glenville, not Allston. I’m not trying to split hairs, but the right address should be noted, if I am at all correct on this matter.

    I’ve been in the area for 6 months, and have NEVER seen an officer, in any capacity, in this part of Allston. Ringer Park is right here, so you think a patrol would be necessary in this shady (at night-time) locale.

    Either way, my condolences go out to the family/friends of the departed. I wish all of you the very best.

    1. Yeah, I was confused about that, too. It seems the call to the police came from 139 Allston (wherever that in fact is), while the murder occured right in front of 112 Allston, which is a blue-ish house.

  15. Anyone on this comment thread that actually thinks Allston is a safe neighborhood clearly has no idea where they are. I have lived in Allston for many years. Frankly, I’ve seen one too many guns there for me to consider calling it a safe place. I have been robbed, I have seen people stabbed on my old street, I have witnessed beatings. There have been a number of unsolved stabbings and shootings here even over last four years and I can bet that almost everyone at BU at least knows of someone who was violently mugged. Not trying to scare you here, I love Allston. But I do not understand why between violent crimes, we somehow forget that hese episodes are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger trend. Being aware of this is the first step toward protecting yourself in the hood.

    1. You’ve seen all this and you still “love Allston”? But at least you are aware and still choose to live there. Simple solution to everyone’s fear: don’t live there. It is *not* that much cheaper than other areas, and you don’t *have* to live as close to campus as possible.

    2. Yeah, I’m not sure what there is to love. Some refer to the ‘bohemian’ feel, but I think they’re just confusing that with ugly, poorly kept, buildings and stores.

      There’s ‘bohemian,’ which in the least means that Allston has achieved a certain standard. It has positive cultural content, in the sense that it’s ‘bohemianness’ isn’t just a privation of a certain quality. Then there’s ‘garbage,’ which means its failed to meet a certain standard. It’s pure privation.

      And that’s all Allston is.

      Let’s no mix those up and make it sound like this is some hippie haven.

  16. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the victim. This is a very sad time for the BU community as we all feel hurt and saddended by this senseless act of violence.

  17. I have lived in this small neighborhood for 2 years and haven’t ever really felt unsafe. I actually refer to it as Hipster Nation due to the loads of converse sneaker wearing possies that it is made up of. They do not seem like the violent type, to be honest. I would look into the grafiti around the area though if I were the police. “Made in China” appears a couple places throughout the neighborhood. Probably is just a little kid rebelling and trying to be cool by tagging a wall but also could be the sign of someone claiming their turf.

  18. That is my house that I used to live in, pictured in the snapshot at the top of the page.
    I never saw police around my house, except if there was a party going on that they wanted to break up. They would be there in an instant, eyes bulging and eager to physically and verbally abuse us. However, if we ever called the police to report a robbery, a gunshot, or anything else very dangerous, it would take them forever to respond. The BPD is full of nutjob cops that don’t want to protect students – they want to bully them and throw them in jail.

  19. it makes little difference whether or not allston is ‘safe’ according to anyone’s particulars. consider that BU is a gerrymandered campus stitching through four neighborhoods, bounded by railyards and a river and a ballpark. there is no real perimeter and hard to define and police boundaries. campus housing is scattered and haphazard at best.

    so you are left scattershot in a big city. any malefactor knows an easy mark when he sees one, and in a city full of students you’re dealing with crimes of opportunity and chance that can’t be effectively policed.

    so you grow up fast; faster when preyed upon.

    1. BU locality is completely unsafe. I suggest all foreigners to be very careful and be alert all the time. It is safe not to come out in the late nights and dial police immediately, if some thing goes wrong.

  20. The name of the victim is K Seshadri Rao,the 24-year-old was pursuing an MBA degree in mathematical finance (treasury management) at Boston University School of Management. He was scheduled to complete the four-semester 18-month course in May and had been offered a three-month paid internship in a company there.

    You can read the entire article by clicking on the following link.
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/Odia-student-shot-dead-in-Boston/articleshow/12772208.cms

  21. My humble submission to all Universities that they should add to all their academic curriculums about ethics, values, honesty and a clean life. University authorities should also have metal and ammunition detectors and bring in a policy that no one on the campus shall carry any weapon, be it licensed or otherwise. Above all, it is the person’s integrity that matters. Howsoever serious a problem is, there is at least ONE peaceful solution. Why not follow this clean rout and make a good citizen on our planet Earth which the God has given to us!

    1. A couple of points: 1) It is already illegal to carry weapons on campus. 2) This incident was not on campus 3) A weapon is often the only way to protect yourself from people who have no intention of following laws. 4) Therefore, students are theoretically safer outside of campus than on campus. The police can’t be everywhere, and it’s not in their job description to provide protection to individuals (as determined by the Supreme Court case Castle Rock v. Gonzales).

  22. please don’t keep on saying it is not a BU campus.BU doesn’t have a gated campus.So please tell me where the boarders of the BU campus end???It is the area where students live.It is a terrible thing.I am so sorry for him.
    I live in a developing country but every store and apartment have a camera in front of them.Many criminals get caught by this way.He or she is still out there walking freely.

  23. The student came from a country thousands of miles away to study and become something.He thought he was going to the first world and be safe. But this country is full of psychos, drug addicts, people with no moral upbringing.

  24. my heart goes out to the family of the student.. may he rest in peace.

    as a fellow indian, i suspect it to be a hate crime. my family is so worried for all the right reasons. when will you americans learn that guns yield only more violence and not the only way to protect self. this is ridiculous. sorry.

  25. What a great loss! A 24-year student with great potential in life lost to this crime – not sure the reason! Looking at reaction from his home country, it appears the family had borrowed a lot of money for his master’s degree. He was a bright student and had great potential. He was not too far from completing his studies. My thoughts and prayers to the family of the victim. Hope such incidents do not happen again in that neighborhood.

  26. You can’t just say that BUPD needs to patrol more in this area unless your willing to sacrifice patrol in other areas. It is a pretty simple concept really. If you need bodies to relocate from areas currently covered then property closer to the majority of BU students will be neglected. The reality is that those traveling/living on the outskirts of the masses will be at risk compared to those central to the core of the university.

  27. I hated reading this article, as well as President Brown’s letter to the BU community. Both sound so trite and hackneyed, and I can’t help but get the feeling that they are withholding a lot of information. I know they cannot give out all of the details because they want to respect the victim and his family/friends, however, they really cannot even mention whether it was a suspected robbery? Was his wallet missing?
    I grew up in this area and Ringer Park and its surrounding areas has always been sketchy at night. I have known women who have been sexually assaulted/raped in this area, as well as people who have been jumped by gang members, who have been known to hang around there a lot. Perhaps this was some kind of gang initiation, like “Go kill the first person you see.” I mean he was shot in the leg and then the head? They obviously wanted to keep him from getting away so they could kill him. How cruel :( Also, he was a graduate student and well-respected, so I doubt he was the kind of person caught up in drugs or some other type of activity that could cause him to be murdered.

    Praying for him and his family/friends. Such a tragedy.

      1. I was being sarcastic in response to oraclemonkey’s comment, which I thought was over-the-top. I think it actually minimizes the random horror of this crime to imply that all BU students are just tryin’ to survive in the ‘hood.

  28. Do the police only patrol areas where there are pubs and bars, main roads and side streets just off main roads, or do they also patrol, FREQUENTLY, “shady” desolate side streets that are mostly residential? Maybe when the slumlords, er, I mean landlords, of Allston start losing money due to students not wanting to rent there any longer, things will change for the better. The power of the almighty buck… Cost of university fees are very expensive for parents and students–students are only trying to find a lesser expensive place to live and it’s a travesty that a cheap apartment usually means dangerous neighborhood in Allston. Bad enough some of those apartments barely have adequate plumbing and heating. Please do not travel alone at night in Allston, traveling in twos may not be sufficient, either.

  29. I am curious about the comment left concerning gun ownership. It always mistifies me when people immediately connect gun violence with the repression of responsible and legal gun owners. If the SOB that did this awful thing is ever caught, I highly doubt that he will be a registered gun owner with a license to carry. As someone who has gone through Massachusetts lengthy, complicated, and expensive process of legal gun ownership in order to protect myself and those around me, I am bothered by those who attempt to link us with those criminals who we work so actively against.

  30. Allston used to be full of families ,coffee shops and a butcher shop. It was a nice family oriented area . The college kids treat the neighborhood like trash. The kids being Bussed in from Brighton High trash the area through RIngers park on their way to the west end house . Maybe if we fine the slumlords and press charges against the obnoxious drunk college kids screaming at two A.M without regards for the sleeping neighbors things might improve around here. Maybe we should keep out the illegal aliens , college kids and others passing through our area things would improve. Stop building low income housing around here and things would improve!!!!!

  31. May he rest in peace. I went to BU ages ago and Allston was always a sketchy, dangerous area. I hope BU does something about protecting students who live in Allston. I know it is not technically considered to be part of the BU campus, but perhaps those parameters should be expanded or reconsidered being that so many BU students live there. Or perhaps Allston should be discouraged by BU as a reasonable place to live. There ARE other inexpensive places to live in Boston, they are just further away, but safety first, location second.

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