An apartment on Chester Avenue early in the morning earlier this week.
The city is asleep.
Two Chelsea young men are asleep at 95 Chester Avenue – and there are others inside the apartment.
An assailant or assailants come to the apartment.
The two Chelsea young men are shot to death.
In actuality, they are executed.
They die on the spot.
Later that morning police are called to the address – and then the word gets out: two men shot to death in Chelsea.
A large crowd gathers outside the house.
The state police are called to control the crowd as investigators move in to do their work.
The Chelsea Record receives two messages – powerful and real, from two of our most important leaders decrying the violence.
City Manager Jay Ash is beside himself.
Police Chief Brian Kyes, too.
Like all of us, and everyone living in this city, this double homicide, this brutal double murder, this execution of two young Chelsea men, both 26, is hard to take.
We learn that they were both known to the local police.
We all tend to think that drugs were involved – and it is quite possible these were executions by an angry drug dealer; angry that he was owed money for drugs either stolen or not paid for.
The drug was most likely cocaine.
We don’t know this for certain – and we don’t known who carried out the executions.
What type of people do such things, we tend to ask ourselves?
Animals do such things.
Savages.
People who have lost their interest in life.
The two Chelsea young men executed earlier this week were known to police.
Their lives weren’t exemplary.
But they didn’t deserve to die.
The bigger question. The greater question. The nagging question that begs for an answer is how many more are going to die, to be executed in this city and in Greater Boston, before we all come together to wipe out the guns and to tame the violence?
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