The men accused in the murder of a 15-year-old boy in Dorchester this summer appeared in court where the alleged shooter was ordered held without bail and the alleged shooter’s driver was held in lieu of $75,000 bail.
Curtis Ashford Jr. had promised his mother that he would be home by 8 p.m. on July 27 when he went to play some basketball at the Erie-Ellington Playground, the Herald reported at the time.
But just around 30 minutes before he was to be home, prosecutor Julie Higgins said in Suffolk Superior Court Wednesday, he was instead struck in the back by one of 15 bullets shot by Zontre Mack, who made his getaway in a car driven by Dominick Gavin. Ashford had turned 15 only 12 days before he was declared dead later that evening at Boston Medical Center, Higgins said.
Magistrate Stacey Pichardo ordered Mack, 19, of Canton, who is first-degree murder and illegal weapons and ammunition possession, held without bail. She set bail at $75,000 for Gavin, 25, of Boston, who is charged with accessory after the fact of murder.
The bail amount was far from the $250,000 Higgins requested, but still far in excess of what his lawyer, Amy Codagnone, said he could afford. Pichard also ordered that should Gavin be released, he not have any contact or go near Ashford’s family, but denied Higgins request for GPS monitoring, citing recent Supreme Judicial Court guidance on the issue.
Higgins said that it was shortly before 7:30 p.m. that the two men pulled up to Michigan Avenue, just one block away from and parallel to Ellington Street where the playground sits at the corner with Erie Street, in Gavins’ black 2011 Hyundai Sonata. Gavins remained in the car but Mack got out.
“It was a hot July day and he was still wearing a full-length black hoodie and the hoodie was up over his head and he walked a short distance to Ellington Street,” Higgins said, where he “then fired 15 rounds at a group of individuals that were standing around a parked white Range Rover.”
Among that group, she said surveillance footage showed, was Ashford. The boy takes off on his bike, then drops it and starts to run, Higgins said, “then collapses around a park that is near the end of the street.”
Witnesses made out a partial plate, Higgins said, and it was located at its registered address on Monsignor Reynolds Way at around 8 p.m. where, she said, police found the firearm wrapped inside a sweatshirt in the trunk.
Gavin has 22 adult and two juvenile entries on his record, Higgins said. Of those, he was convicted in two cases, including in 2018 for intimidation of a witness and assault with a dangerous weapon and in 2017 for firearms charges.
Mack has no prior adult record, Higgins said, but has 27 juvenile entries on his record, though most of them had been dismissed. Of note are charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon — a shod foot — against a person over 60 in 2019 and a charge of assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest in 2020.