Teen Guns Down Prosecutor

A state prosecutor on an anti-gang task force was shot to death by a hooded teenager outside a train station in what police said may have been an assassination.

“It sounds more like Colombia than Massachusetts. We’ve crossed over the line,” said Capt. Al Sweeney.

Paul R. McLaughlin, 42, was killed Monday evening in the city’s West Roxbury neighborhood after he got off a crowded commuter train. A teenager in a hooded shirt put a gun to his face and shot him as he was about to get into his car to drive home from the station’s parking lot, police said.

The suspected killer, described by police as 14 or 15 years old, ran down the tracks and escaped.

“Paul was a major prosecutor and prosecuted some of the toughest customers in the city of Boston,” Attorney General Scott Harshbarger said.