By Chaseedaw Giles
BOSTON — On days when the solar was shining and the air was heat with a delicate, cooling breeze, Ateiya Sowers-Hassell favored to maintain the salon door open. Labor Day was a kind of days. Sowers-Hassell was tending to 2 purchasers at Salvaged Roots, the pure hair salon and spa within the 4 Corners part of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood the place she works as a stylist. She was in a groove, soothing music enjoying within the background, when gunshots boomed via the air.
She noticed individuals working from Unique Barbershop subsequent door. She heard a voice telling a 911 operator that somebody had been shot within the head. Her fingers shook as she ventured exterior. Then she noticed 20-year-old Elijah Clunie slumped in a barber’s chair, haircut unfinished.
Within the chaos, a 7-year-old boy stood in shock, eyes bulging at Clunie’s physique. Sowers-Hassell requested the boy to come back together with her and sheltered him on the salon till his father arrived. “He stored going, ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,’” she mentioned, and he later instructed her he by no means wished to get his hair lower once more.
Barbershops and salons are regarded within the Black group as secure, sacred areas, the place women and men collect to snort, debate, and see their unofficial therapists: the barbers and stylists. When these refuges are violated by gun violence, an unstated bond is damaged.
Clunie’s killing price Dorchester greater than his personal younger life. Shootings ship ripples of trauma via communities that may carry throughout generations. A 2020 research discovered that publicity to gun killings was linked to larger ranges of despair, suicidal ideation, and different psychological well being difficulties. Kids and younger adults have been essentially the most inclined, and Black youth have been disproportionately affected.
When economists calculate the societal prices of gun violence, “what they discover is that a lot larger than hospital therapy or legal justice response or something, is the concern and trauma and the way it impacts people and companies,” mentioned Daniel Webster, a professor and distinguished scholar with the Johns Hopkins Heart for Gun Violence Options.
4 Corners — dwelling largely to African American, Caribbean, and Puerto Rican households — isn’t a vacation spot neighborhood. A historic Methodist church is without doubt one of the few points of interest. There aren’t any main supermarkets, fantastic eating eating places, or hospitals. Of the companies that do exist, many canopy their doorways and home windows in plexiglass and metallic bars.
“We speak about these meals deserts of fine, wholesome meals; the reality of the matter is, it’s a desert for all the pieces,” Webster mentioned. “Companies typically don’t need to be there.”
The proprietor of Salvaged Roots, Shanita Clarke, mentioned she meant her salon to face out as an oasis locally.
Clarke was planning to take her then-13-year-old son to the salon to get his hair achieved when she bought a cellphone name concerning the capturing. She rushed to work to test on her stylists. Clarke, her workers, and purchasers spent the following three hours ready whereas officers collected proof. Within the weeks that adopted, calls got here in to push again appointments. Clarke mentioned she may sense her purchasers’ nervousness and understood it. Though she wasn’t within the store when Clunie was shot, she skilled the incident vicariously via the sound of gunshots captured on the salon’s safety footage and accounts from her workers.
A case assertion from the commonwealth of Massachusetts alleges the suspect in Clunie’s killing, Diamond Jose Brito, entered Unique Barbershop carrying all black clothes and a ski masks. Brito walked to the again of the store, the place Clunie was seated, and requested his barber how lengthy the wait was for a haircut. About 45 minutes later, the assertion alleges, Brito returned, walked to Clunie’s chair, shot him behind the pinnacle with a small silver revolver, then shot one other sufferer a number of instances.
Brito, of Canton, Massachusetts, was arrested in Mattapan in October and is being held with out bail. He pleaded not responsible to all the fees in opposition to him, together with homicide.
“Mr. Brito maintains his innocence and we’re trying ahead to presenting his protection at trial,” Brito’s legal professional, David Leon, mentioned in an announcement to KFF Well being Information.
Boston Metropolis Councilor Brian Worrell’s workplace is across the nook from Salvaged Roots and Unique Barbershop. The neighborhood requires funding and initiatives by elected officers and policymakers, he mentioned. Residents need to really feel that homeownership and steady careers are attainable.
“That may’t be some far-off pondering,” mentioned Worrell, who represents District 4, which incorporates that a part of Dorchester. “They’ve to have the ability to see it, and it has to indicate up of their lives, in an actual, tangible manner.”
Clunie had been a scholar at TechBoston Academy and a basketball participant who was named participant of the sport after a giant win his senior yr, in 2022. However in a draft senior presentation uploaded to the presentation web site Prezi in June of that yr, a consumer presumed to be Clunie wrote: “Once I first moved to the Dorchester space I believed I used to be going to die,” noting “the killings on the information” each day.
Moments after the capturing, an unknown particular person walked into the barbershop and recorded a graphic video of Clunie’s physique, which was then uploaded to social media platforms. It unfold on Fb and X, main customers to search out Clunie’s private accounts, on which some commenters made mild of his dying. He would have turned 21 the Saturday following his killing.
Worrell referred to as the video particularly inappropriate and callous. However apathy within the face of violence, he mentioned, isn’t exhausting to think about in a group struggling meals and housing insecurity, struggling colleges, and a persistent lack of alternative.
Clarke mentioned she’s torn on how one can transfer ahead. Loud noises and being alone set off nervousness, and he or she now generally locks the salon doorways as soon as purchasers are in for his or her appointments. She’s felt anger and isolation, she mentioned.
Recovering from the trauma of witnessing gun violence is commonly tougher for onlookers after they nonetheless dwell and work the place the shootings occurred.
“We need to handle the psychological well being trauma from gun violence, however let’s not child ourselves,” Webster mentioned. “If we don’t truly handle gun violence, we’re swimming in opposition to a very robust tide.”
Since she opened her salon nearly six years in the past, Clarke has been lively in group efforts to make the neighborhood safer, attending civic affiliation and neighborhood conferences and talking with police and native politicians.
Clarke believes efforts to wash up close by Melnea Cass Boulevard moved extra drug customers into Dorchester. Salvaged Roots is subsequent to a commuter rail station, which Clarke mentioned attracts transients who arrange camps and go away behind trash and generally drug paraphernalia. Solely per week earlier than Clunie’s killing, there was a deadly capturing throughout the road from the salon.
In 2024, there have been about 20 shootings within the police district that features 4 Corners, 5 of them deadly. Many of the victims have been Black males, in response to a KFF Well being Information evaluation of Boston Police Division information.
Although gun violence total is at a file low in Boston since 2023 and town has invested extra in investigative assets — together with police detectives, administration, and oversight — a disproportionate quantity happens in Boston’s traditionally Black communities.
Since Clarke opened Salvaged Roots, she feels 4 Corners has gotten each higher and worse. “If different companies go away, then the place do those who dwell locally — the place are the great locations that they get to go to?” she requested.
Residents of neighborhoods with frequent gun violence and crime can mistakenly be perceived as being desensitized, however “we will by no means settle for the violence as regular,” Boston Metropolis Council President Ruthzee Louijeune mentioned. She’s volunteered and labored in 4 Corners and mentioned tackling the violence takes a multipronged method, together with getting weapons off the road and offering entry to inexpensive housing, safe jobs, and good well being care.
In communities of coloration, she mentioned, intergenerational trauma from racism and poverty should even be addressed.
In Dorchester, Louijeune mentioned, a excessive variety of residents resort to visiting emergency rooms for psychological well being points. The neighborhood wants extra entry to well being care, she mentioned, particularly for younger individuals. Throughout Boston, Black residents have been practically twice as more likely to go to the ER for psychological well being care than white residents, in response to the Boston Public Well being Fee’s 2024 Psychological Well being Report.
Months later, consideration and curiosity over the capturing had died down, however the trauma remained. Sowers-Hassell continues to work at Salvaged Roots, and although town despatched a trauma group to fulfill with the stylists after the capturing, she nonetheless has flashbacks. She mentioned the inflow of assets was useful and that 4 Corners has been a bit quieter. However she’s skeptical the reprieve will final.
“Everyone talks a very good recreation,” she mentioned, “however when it’s time to get one thing achieved, what’s going to occur?”
KFF Well being Information is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is without doubt one of the core working applications at KFF—an impartial supply of well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism. Be taught extra about KFF.Subscribe to KFF Well being Information’ free Morning Briefing. This text first appeared on KFF Well being Information and is republished right here beneath a Artistic Commons license.
