Boston Killings Overshadow Man's Death

BOSTON--Just hours after a pregnant woman and her husband from the suburbs were shot in a robbery attempt that outraged the city, a young Black man was shot in the neck and pronounced dead on arrival at a city hospital.

The death of 29-year-old James Moody, virtually overlooked by the publicity surrounding the white couple, is more typical of the more than 170 recorded shootings in the city since September 1.

Moody's death was vastly overshadowed in ther glare of police and press attention focused on the shooting death of Carol Stuart, 33, and the wounding of her husband, Charles, 30, of suburban Reading.

The Stuarts were found shot in the city's Mission Hill neighborhood after leaving a birthing class at Brigham and Women's Hospital around 8:30 p.m. on Monday. Moody was shot shortly after midnight in Dorchester, several miles away.

At a press conference yesterday morning, Mayor Raymond Flynn angrily denounced suggestions that police are deploying more detectives on the case because the victims were a middle-class white couple from the suburbs.

"That's an outrage," Flynn said. "We respond to any kind of situation, whether it's a stockbroker from the suburbs or an Asian kid from the city."

But this latest, anonymous death may be more symbolic of the violence that has dogged the city in recent months.

The incident began around 12:20 a.m. on Tuesday when an ambulance heading down Washington St. bound for Carney Hospital was flagged down by two men in a car. Moody, suffering from a gunshot wound to the neck, was a passenger in the car, police said.

Ambulance emergency medical technicians brought Moody to Carney Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 12:25 a.m., police spokesperson Jill Reilly said.

Three homicide detectives have been assigned to the case, in contrast to the squads of officers working on the Stuart shooting.