The man accused of shooting another man to death in Dorchester Saturday night was ordered held without bail — and the bail he had already posted for another matter he was out on when the alleged shooting went down was revoked.
Mikai Thomson, 21, of Dorchester, was arrested Sunday afternoon in Roxbury on a warrant for various firearms charges and assault and battery on a police officer, according to the Boston Police Department. The cops soon upped the charges to include the murder of Xavier Rivas, 22, of Boston, and a slew of firearms-related charges.
“Your honor, this is a very strong case for the commonwealth,” prosecutor John Verner said at the arraignment Tuesday morning in municipal court in Dorchester. “He brazenly committed this crime while wearing a court-order GPS monitoring device.”
Defense attorney Joseph Perullo was successfully able to keep Thomson hidden in the holding area, with door cracked just enough that the judge could see him, during the arraignment.
Police responded to Old Road and Michigan Avenue in Dorchester at around 11:40 p.m. Saturday where they found Rivas suffering from gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead in the ambulance on the way to a nearby hospital, according to the police report.
After interviewing witnesses and reviewing security footage, detectives allege that Thomson — wearing a zip-up hoodie and sporting a GPS monitoring device on his ankle — came up behind Rivas and attempted to grab the chain around his neck, to which Rivas pushed him back, according to the report. So, police allege, Thomson took a gun out of his pants and started shooting, striking Rivas “multiple times.”
Prosecutor Verner said that the shooting had at least six witnesses, that one of them was able to pick Thomson out as the shooter from a photo array, that the GPS device puts Thomson at the scene and time of the shooting and that police found a trash bag containing the clothing Thomson purportedly wore during the alleged shooting.
Thomson wore the GPS bracelet because he was on release for charges of assault and battery on a police officer and firearms charges dating to a December 2021 Blue Hill Avenue traffic stop in which Thomson was the passenger in a vehicle containing a pound of weed and no occupants old enough to have bought it, according to that incident’s police report.
When the officer questioned Thomson, the front-seat passenger, if he had any weapons on him, Thomson allegedly “aggressively extended his arm, striking (the officer’s) chest with his hand to push me away from him and took off running.” During the pursuit, police say Thomson dropped a Taurus Model G3 9mm pistol.
