While police and community members worked to ease tensions in a Dorchester neighborhood where a 19-year-old was killed during a weekend shootout, Luisa Tavares, surrounded by pictures of her murdered son, wept in her home.
Tavares’ son, 17-year-old Andrew Tavares Silva, was gunned down March 28 at a house party on Maywood Avenue in Roxbury. His friend of more than three years, Manuel DaVeiga, shot himself in the head, the district attorney said, after being approached by police officers Saturday night and firing at them.
The gunfight with police in which DaVeiga killed himself happened in front of Tavares’ Navillus Terrace home where he had come earlier that day to pay his respects to the family.
“I’m crying now for two people,” she said, adding that DaVeiga would sometimes spend the night at the family’s home because he had no other place to go.
‘Tavares recalled a community meeting DaVeiga attended after her son’s murder. She said he was the first one to speak up about his feelings that day.
While Tavares said Da-Veiga appeared distraught in the days after her son’s death and before his own, some of his friends said they didn’t believe the district attorney’s report.
“It’s not true,” said one man who declined to give his name while standing in front of a makeshift memorial to the teens.
