BOSTON — On days when the solar was shining and the air was heat with a mild, cooling breeze, Ateiya Sowers-Hassell preferred to maintain the salon door open. Labor Day was a type 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 by means of 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 arms 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 kept going, ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,’” she stated, 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 neighborhood as secure, sacred areas, the place women and men collect to snigger, 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 by means of communities that may carry throughout generations. A 2020 examine discovered that publicity to gun killings was linked to larger ranges of melancholy, suicidal ideation, and different psychological well being difficulties. Kids and younger adults have been essentially the most prone, and Black youth have been disproportionately affected.
When economists calculate the societal prices of gun violence, “what they find is that much bigger than hospital treatment or criminal justice response or anything, is the fear and trauma and how it affects individuals and businesses,” stated Daniel Webster, a professor and distinguished scholar with the Johns Hopkins Middle for Gun Violence Options.
4 Corners — house largely to African American, Caribbean, and Puerto Rican households — shouldn’t be a vacation spot neighborhood. A historic Methodist church is among 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 steel bars.
“We talk about these food deserts of good, healthy food; the truth of the matter is, it’s a desert for everything,” Webster stated. “Businesses generally don’t want to be there.”
The proprietor of Salvaged Roots, Shanita Clarke, stated she supposed her salon to face out as an oasis in the neighborhood.
Clarke was planning to take her then-13-year-old son to the salon to get his hair completed when she obtained a telephone name in regards to the taking pictures. She rushed to work to test on her stylists. Clarke, her workers, and purchasers spent the subsequent three hours ready whereas officers collected proof. Within the weeks that adopted, calls got here in to push again appointments. Clarke stated she might sense her purchasers’ anxiousness and understood it. Regardless that she wasn’t within the store when Clunie was shot, she skilled the incident vicariously by means of 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 top 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 are looking forward to presenting his defense at trial,” Brito’s legal professional, David Leon, stated 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 stated. Residents should really feel that homeownership and steady careers are doable.
“That can’t be some far-off thinking,” stated Worrell, who represents District 4, which incorporates that a part of Dorchester. “They have to be able to see it, and it has to show up in their lives, in a real, tangible way.”
Clunie had been a scholar at TechBoston Academy and a basketball participant who was named participant of the sport after an enormous 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 person presumed to be Clunie wrote: “When I first moved to the Dorchester area I thought I was going to die,” noting “the killings on the news” day-after-day.
Moments after the taking pictures, an unknown individual 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 seek out Clunie’s private accounts, on which some commenters made mild of his loss of life. He would have turned 21 the Saturday following his killing.
Worrell known as the video particularly inappropriate and callous. However apathy within the face of violence, he stated, isn’t exhausting to think about in a neighborhood struggling meals and housing insecurity, struggling colleges, and a persistent lack of alternative.
Clarke stated she’s torn on the way to transfer ahead. Loud noises and being alone set off anxiousness, and she or he now typically locks the salon doorways as soon as purchasers are in for his or her appointments. She’s felt anger and isolation, she stated.
Recovering from the trauma of witnessing gun violence is usually harder for onlookers after they nonetheless dwell and work the place the shootings occurred.
“We want to address the mental health trauma from gun violence, but let’s not kid ourselves,” Webster stated. “If we don’t actually address gun violence, we’re swimming against a really strong tide.”
Since she opened her salon virtually six years in the past, Clarke has been energetic in neighborhood efforts to make the neighborhood safer, attending civic affiliation and neighborhood conferences and talking with police and native politicians.
Clarke believes efforts to scrub up close by Melnea Cass Boulevard moved extra drug customers into Dorchester. Salvaged Roots is subsequent to a commuter rail station, which Clarke stated attracts transients who arrange camps and go away behind trash and typically drug paraphernalia. Solely every week earlier than Clunie’s killing, there was a deadly taking pictures 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 line with a KFF Well being Information evaluation of Boston Police Division knowledge.
Although gun violence general is at a document low in Boston since 2023 and the 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 other businesses leave, then where do people that live in the community — where are the nice places 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 can never accept the violence as normal,” Boston Metropolis Council President Ruthzee Louijeune stated. She’s volunteered and labored in 4 Corners and stated 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 stated, intergenerational trauma from racism and poverty should even be addressed.
In Dorchester, Louijeune stated, 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 stated, particularly for younger individuals. Throughout Boston, Black residents have been practically twice as prone to go to the ER for psychological well being care than white residents, in line with the Boston Public Well being Fee’s 2024 Psychological Well being Report.
Months later, consideration and curiosity over the taking pictures had died down, however the trauma remained. Sowers-Hassell continues to work at Salvaged Roots, and although the town despatched a trauma workforce to fulfill with the stylists after the taking pictures, she nonetheless has flashbacks. She stated the inflow of assets was useful and that 4 Corners has been somewhat quieter. However she’s skeptical the reprieve will final.
“Everybody talks a good game,” she stated, “but when it’s time to get something done, what’s going to happen?”
