A New Hampshire man has been found guilty of gunning a man down as he celebrated Father’s Day in a Dorchester park with his family two years ago.
A Suffolk Superior Court jury on Thursday convicted Ira Grayson, 37, of Manchester, N.H., of first-degree murder and related weapons charges for the death of Stacy Coleman, 33, of Dorchester, on June 20, 2021. At the time of the shooting, Grayson was on federal supervised release following a conviction in New Hampshire for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
“Today when he walked out of the courtroom, he told his family members that he loved them,” Rhonda Adams, the aunt of the victim, told the Herald following the verdict, which came on her birthday. “But I can’t tell my nephew that I loved him anymore.
“I’m going to tell him he took my nephew away from his kids,” she continued. “My poor sister. He’s killing her, too. She won’t eat anymore. She says all she want is justice. Maybe after today it will be better, that’s what I pray.”
The murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Judge Robert L. Ullmann has scheduled sentencing for Aug. 3 at 9:30 a.m.
“It was a summer’s day, it was father’s day, they wanted to enjoy the day,” prosecutor Jennifer Hickman told the jury about the cookout Coleman was having in Dorchester’s Winthrop Playground off Danube Street in her opening arguments on July 13.
She said children were playing in the playground as the family fired up the grill that evening. Another family, who Coleman’s family knew from the neighborhood, were hosting their own Father’s Day cookout, Hickman told the jury. But among their party was Ira Grayson, a man Coleman didn’t know. Before too long, the men got into a verbal altercation.
The argument got so rough, she said, that Coleman’s mother had to separate the men. And then Grayson left the park.
He would soon come back, a fanny pack with a pistol inside at around 8:25 p.m., prosecutor Hickman said, “with one intent, and one intent only, which was to kill Stacy Coleman.”
He stood in the street and fired into the park, and Coleman began to return gunfire. By the accounts of Hickman, defense attorney James Sultan — who worked with attorney Maura Tansley on the case — as well as the police and paramedic witnesses called that first day, it was a chaotic scene. Coleman would get shot in i left side
Paramedic Ryan Hickey testified that it took only 11 minutes for the ambulance to transport Coleman to the Boston Medical Center, but there wasn’t much they could do. Coleman was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m.
“That sounds pretty good, but anyone can tell a story but that doesn’t make it true,” defense attorney Sultan said in his own opening. “At a murder trial, it isn’t enough for the prosecution to make up a story, they have to prove it with evidence.”
He cast doubt on the evidence collected in the chaotic scene, where by all accounts those there were being uncooperative with the police on the scene, with Officer Max McGuire testifying that he and others were having trouble controlling the crowd and securing the scene. Sultan also said the witnesses identified a shooter who in no way resembled his client and that the investigation was rushed.